NOAH
The door to my bedroom didn't just close; I made sure it echoed. A sharp, final thud that felt like a punctuation mark on the disaster of the last hour.
I was being held hostage. Me. Noah Bennett. I'd survived a man with a weapon and a manifesto only to be treated like a malfunctioning printer by the man who actually owned my contract. The whiplash was enough to give me permanent medical issues. One second Cassian is looking at me like he's ready to burn the city down to find me, and the next, he's barking at me to get in the car and treating me like a liability.
"I hate him," I whispered to the empty, overly luxurious room. "I actually, legally, and spiritually hate him."
I started pacing. The suite was massive, which was unfortunate, because it gave me too much room to walk off my adrenaline. My brain was doing that thing where it replays the worst moments on a loop. The man's ragged breathing. The smell of the maintenance closet.
And then… Alex.
