The rest of the day was a blur of high-end offices, frantic emails, and project updates. But there was a glaring, gaping hole in the center of the afternoon.
No Cassian.
He was nowhere. He wasn't in the satellite office; he wasn't in the scheduled conference rooms; he wasn't even a shadow in the hallways. It was as if he had vanished into the Spanish air, leaving only the memory of his fury behind. He had vanished like he was never here at all.
And that feeling, the unexplainable, crushing sadness, kept growing. It was bigger now, a physical weight pressing down on my sternum until it felt like my ribs might crack.
I kept replaying the argument. I couldn't stop. I thought about his face when I mentioned the prison record, that moment of raw, exposed hurt that had flickered behind the Wolfe mask.
