When Cassie slipped out of the café a month earlier, she hadn't vanished into thin air the way Frederick and Sienna hoped.
She simply went home, moving with a calmness born from exhaustion, packed a small suitcase with the essentials, left behind the car she never legally owned, and ordered an Uber.
No melodrama. No scene. Just a quiet exit from a life that had taken more than it ever gave.
She knew Frederick would come after her, for what she did to Sienna but Cassie no longer had the strength to fight him. Not yet. She needed solitude first. Silence. A place untouched by their history.
A place where she could gather the shattered pieces of herself and figure out what part of her life was still salvageable.
The hotel room she checked into was modest but peaceful, a stark
