All Chapters of His Dirty Little Secret : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

170 Chapters

Beautiful things break easiest.

Cassidy’s POV Next day the city felt different after the lake.Sharper.Less forgiving.By the time Dante’s car pulled into the underground garage beneath Voss-Damiani Holdings, the sky was a hard sheet of gray, and the knot in my stomach had only tightened. Lake air and children’s laughter had been replaced by concrete, steel, and the cold efficiency of a building that ran on money, secrets, and whoever could keep their nerve longest.Usually, stepping into the office clicked something into place for me.It was muscle memory now—my heels against polished stone, my coffee balanced in one hand, tablet in the other, Dante at my side radiating command before we even reached the private elevator. Usually, this building made sense to me. I knew its rhythms. Its politics. Its whispers.Today, it felt like enemy territory.Not because it had changed.Because now I knew Lucas had surfaced.And men like Lucas Voss never stayed at the edge of the water for long.Dante came around the car and o

What do you need??

Cassidy's POV By eleven, the building was humming with tension, even if no one could name it.News traveled differently in places like this—not through facts, but through temperature changes. A canceled meeting here. Extra security at the elevators there. Dante leaving his office door open but his expression closed. Me bypassing pleasantries and moving like I was racing a fire.People noticed.Of course they did.Mia appeared at my desk with two folders and a look that was trying very hard to be casual. “Everything okay?”“No.”She blinked. “Oh.”I softened by a fraction. “Sorry. That came out harsher than I meant.”Her mouth tightened. “No, it didn’t. What do you need?”I glanced at her, reassessing. Mia had been with the company long enough to know when not to ask questions.“Pull me the temporary access logs for the last two months,” I said. “And don’t mention it to anyone.”She nodded once. “Done.”Thirty minutes later, I had three names circled.One cleaning contractor who’d bee

What's the protocol?

Cassidy’s POV By the time we left the studio, rain had settled over the city in a fine, steady sheet—soft enough to look harmless, heavy enough to soak through if you stood in it too long.It matched my mood perfectly.Quiet on the surface.Danger underneath.The drive back was tense in that intimate, familiar way Dante and I had perfected over the years—no wasted words, just the hum of the engine, the rhythm of windshield wipers, and the weight of everything unsaid pressing against the glass. He’d told me the outline of his plan halfway home: bait Lucas. Feed him a controlled vulnerability. Leak the appearance of a weak point and wait to see where he struck.It was smart.Cold.Exactly the kind of move that had built Dante’s empire in the first place.And exactly the kind of move that made me understand, all over again, why men like Lucas Voss and Dante Damiani recognized each other as natural enemies.I was still turning it over in my head the next morning when I stepped out of the

Tell me exactly what happened.

Cassidy's POV His office door shut behind us with a soft, final click. For a second neither of us spoke. The city stretched beyond the windows, gray and immense and uncaring. Rain tracked down the glass in long diagonal lines, distorting the skyline into something blurred and unreal. Dante loosened his tie just once, then turned to face me fully. “Tell me exactly what happened.” “I came in, checked the desk, saw the box, didn’t touch it. Mia saw me react. That’s it.” “You’re sure it wasn’t here last night?” “Yes.” “Any unknown calls? Messages? Deliveries yesterday?” I thought back fast. “No calls. One vendor confirmation, one gallery email, one no-caller voicemail that hung up without speaking. I flagged it but didn’t prioritize it because of the access report.” Dante’s jaw flexed. “Forward me everything.” “Already did.” That got the faintest flicker of grim approval from him. I crossed my arms, less for defense than to hold myself steady. “How does he know ab

I’m not calling the company.

Cassidy's POV Dante didn’t speak right away.He moved instead.Deliberate. Controlled. Dangerous in the quietest way.He crossed the office in three long strides, grabbed a glass from the sideboard, and poured water with steady hands that didn’t quite match the storm gathering behind his eyes. The soft clink of glass against the marble counter sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.Then he turned back to me.Pressed the glass into my hand.Not asking.Not explaining.Just knowing.“Drink,” he said quietly.It wasn’t a command.It wasn’t soft either.It was… grounding.Anchoring.Like he could see the exact second my mind was about to spiral and decided to catch it before it did.I took a sip.Cool.Real.Something to hold onto.Because my thoughts were already racing—fast, sharp, connecting dots I didn’t even want to see.Dante watched me the entire time.Not my face.My eyes.Measuring.Waiting.Making sure I stayed here—with him—and not lost somewhere in fear.I swallowed slowly,

It was to close the gap.

Cassidy’s POV No one moved.Not at first.The entire executive floor—usually a symphony of quiet efficiency, clipped voices, hushed phone calls, the faint clatter of keyboards, and the expensive, carefully orchestrated hum of power—had fallen into something unnatural.Stillness.Not silence exactly. Silence can feel clean. This didn’t.This felt held.Suspended.Like the building itself was drawing in a breath and refusing to let it go.I could feel their eyes on me.On the card.On the lilies.Waiting.That was the part no one ever said out loud in places like this: people always waited for the moment the woman would break.Especially when she had survived too much already.Especially when the threat was this deliberate.This elegant.This personal.They wanted the crack in the glass. The trembling hand. The swallowed panic. The loss of composure that would let them recategorize everything they thought they knew about me.Not because they were cruel—though some of them were—but beca

He’s trying to break you.

Cassidy's POV I picked the card up again, studying the handwriting more closely. Precise. Elegant. Controlled. No jagged pressure marks. No hesitation in the strokes. No rushed endings. Whoever had written this—Lucas himself or someone working under him—hadn’t been angry. Hadn’t been shaking. Hadn’t been improvising. This was deliberate from the first pen stroke. And that told me more than any threat could. “He’s not emotional,” I said slowly, tracing the air just above the ink without touching it. “This isn’t reactive. It’s staged.” Dante moved to lean against the edge of his desk, arms crossed, watching me instead of the card. He always did that when he wanted the full shape of my thinking. “Walk me through it.” I nodded, grounding myself in the thing I knew best outside of him: order. Logic. Sequence. Control. “The key yesterday,” I started. “The lilies today. He’s building a pattern.” “Escalation,” Dante said. “Yes. But measured escalation.” I tapped the card

What did he say?

Cassidy's POV Dante reached for my hand then, pulling me closer—not possessive, not controlling. Anchoring. “Then we handle it,” he said. “How?” I asked. His expression shifted. Sharp. Predatory. Certain. “The way we handle everything.” A pause. Then— “Together. And smarter than him.” I let out a slow breath. “Okay.” That single word carried more than agreement. It was consent to the next phase of this. To the fact that peace, at least the easy kind, was over. Outside the windows, the rain hadn’t stopped. It streaked down the glass in relentless silver lines, blurring the city beyond into something distant and unreachable. But now it didn’t feel distant anymore. It felt like a barrier. Like something watching from the other side. Waiting. Planning. Smiling. I glanced once more at the lilies, still visible through the glass wall of his office where they’d been left sitting on my desk like a grave marker. At the card. At the message hid

The First Countermove

Cassidy's POV An hour later, the office no longer felt frozen. It felt armed. Quietly. Systematically. Security presence increased, but subtly. New faces appeared near the elevator banks in tailored civilian clothes instead of obvious uniforms. Temporary access was paused under the pretense of a routine systems recalibration. Vendor appointments were “rescheduled.” The service corridor Lucas had used was suddenly inaccessible due to a fabricated plumbing issue. No alarms. No spectacle. Just pressure applied inward. From my desk, I built patterns. Mia fed me visitor records. Reynolds’ team sent corridor access logs. IT sent metadata from delivery notifications and internal routing permissions. I lined it all up, stripping away noise until shapes began to emerge. Every move Lucas had made touched one common thread. Not Dante’s calendar. Mine. Flower delivery window aligned with my morning coffee run. The black box appeared in the six-minute interval betwee

You’d be exposed.

Cassidy’s POV I looked up at him over my shoulder, his hand still curled around the back of my chair, his body a solid wall of heat and control behind me.“No.”The word came out sharper than I intended, but not sharp enough to be regret.Dante’s brows lowered slightly. “No?”“If we change everything now, whoever’s feeding him notices immediately.” I turned in the chair so I could face him fully, one hand still resting on the tablet balanced across my lap. “He’s studying patterns, yes—but that means he’s also watching for disruption. If my routine changes too fast, too cleanly, too obviously, then the person giving him access knows we’ve seen the line he’s drawing.”His jaw flexed once.I could see him following it already. The logic. The danger. The necessity.I pushed on before he could answer.“We don’t slam every door at once,” I said. “We let one stay open long enough to see who’s standing behind it.”Across the desk, Mia looked up from her laptop, eyes flicking between us. Reyn

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