Chapter 3 No.3

The black cashmere dress fit like a second skin. The high collar elegantly concealed the developing bruises on her neck, while the long sleeves hid the goosebumps that rose from the air conditioning. She looked in the mirror. She looked severe. Dangerous. Like a widow in waiting.

She sat in the sleek, mechanized wheelchair that had been left in the corner of the room-a reminder of her "condition." She gripped the joystick controller. She hated the thing, but for now, it was her tank.

Cassandra rolled to the bedroom door and tried the handle. Locked.

She didn't bang on it. She didn't scream. She waited.

Ten minutes later, the lock disengaged with a beep. Alfred stood there, holding a tray of food. Behind him stood two massive men in dark suits. Viper, Kade's head of security, chewed gum with an air of boredom.

"Breakfast, Madam," Alfred said, moving to enter.

Cassandra maneuvered the wheelchair forward, blocking his path.

The two guards immediately stepped in, blocking the hallway with walls of muscle.

"Mrs. Mullen," Viper said, not unkindly, but firmly. "Boss said you stay in the penthouse."

Cassandra looked up at him. She didn't flinch. She didn't retreat. She held his gaze with a terrifying calmness.

"I want to go to the guest suites," she said. "The ones in the basement."

Viper paused, his gum chewing slowing down. The basement wasn't for guests. It was for holding corporate spies, threats, and people Kade hadn't decided what to do with yet.

"That's not a good idea," Viper said.

"Kade said I couldn't leave the building," Cassandra countered, her voice steady. "The basement is in the building. Unless you want to call him during his Monday morning board meeting and explain that you're bothering him because I want to take an elevator ride?"

Viper hesitated. He knew Kade's temper during board meetings. He weighed the risk.

"Fine," Viper grunted. He tapped his earpiece. "Escorting the package to B3."

The elevator ride was silent. As the numbers descended, the air grew cooler. The smell of cedarwood was replaced by the smell of ozone and damp concrete.

When the doors opened, they stepped into a corridor lined with reinforced glass cells. It was a high-tech dungeon, clean and sterile.

In the second cell, Cassandra saw them.

Dillon and Bianca.

They looked pathetic. Dillon's expensive suit was rumpled, his tie missing. He was pacing the small cell like a caged rat. Bianca was sitting on the cot, her mascara running down her cheeks in black streaks.

Cassandra rolled her wheelchair to the glass. "Open it."

The guard looked at Viper. Viper nodded.

The glass door slid open with a hiss.

Dillon spun around. When he saw Cassandra seated in the chair, his face lit up with a desperate, pathetic hope. He rushed to the bars that separated the inner cell from the anteroom.

"Cassie!" he cried, gripping the bars. "Oh, thank God! I knew you'd come! You have to get us out of here. That psycho kidnapped us! He's going to kill us!"

Bianca scrambled up, rushing to stand beside him. "Sister! Please! It's freezing in here! Tell them who we are!"

Cassandra sat silently, observing them. She felt... nothing. No love. No hate. Just the cold detachment of a surgeon looking at a tumor that needed to be excised.

She pushed the joystick, inching the chair closer.

Dillon reached his hand through the bars, trying to grab her. "Baby, give me your hand. We can sue him. We can take everything he has."

Cassandra reversed the chair smoothly, letting his hand grasp at empty air.

"Save you?" she asked, her voice tilting with genuine curiosity. "Why? So you can sell my location to the paparazzi again? Or so you can finish transferring the rest of my trust fund to your offshore account in the Caymans?"

Dillon froze. His mouth opened and closed like a fish. "What... what are you talking about? Cassie, I love you..."

Cassandra motioned for him to come closer. Dillon pressed his face against the bars, hope reigniting in his eyes. "Cassie?"

She raised her hand. It trembled slightly, weak from atrophy, but the motion was deliberate. She slapped him. It wasn't a powerful blow-it lacked the kinetic force to knock a man down-but the sound was sharp, a stinging rebuke against his cheek.

Slap.

Dillon flinched back more from shock than pain. He touched his cheek, staring at her as if the wheelchair itself had bitten him.

The room went dead silent. The guards stopped breathing. Viper stopped chewing his gum. The fragile, broken Cassandra Williams had just slapped a man.

"Let's be clear," Cassandra said, pulling a silk handkerchief from her sleeve and wiping her hand as if she had touched filth. "Kade is not a psycho. He is my husband."

Bianca let out a shrill shriek. "You're crazy! You're helping that monster hit Dillon!"

Cassandra's eyes snapped to Bianca. The temperature in the room seemed to drop another ten degrees.

"And you," Cassandra said softly. "My dear sister. Don't think I don't know what you put in my warm milk every night since I came home from the hospital."

Bianca's face went white. All the blood drained from her lips. That was a secret. A deep, dark secret.

Viper watched Cassandra, his eyes narrowing. He saw the shift. The posture. The command. This wasn't the girl who cried over broken nails.

High above them, in the penthouse study, Kade sat behind his desk. He was watching the security feed on his monitor. The cigar in his hand had burned down to the filter, unsmoked.

He watched his wife slap her lover. He heard her call him husband.

He leaned forward, his eyes tracking every pixel of her face. Was she acting? Was this a ploy to get them released? Or...

Cassandra turned to the guard. "Turn off the heating in their cell. Since they like cold calculations so much, let them freeze for a bit."

She spun the wheelchair around, the motor whining softly, and headed out of the cell block.

Viper spoke into his lapel mic, his voice low. "Boss... the Mrs... she's different."