Chapter 10 Choices
Cassie woke to the pervasive scent of antiseptic and the low, relentless hum of a heart monitor a sound like a countdown to judgment. The soft morning light filtered weakly through the hospital blinds, painting the private room in a muted gold that did nothing to chase the deep chill from her bones. Her head throbbed with a dull, insistent ache that pulsed behind her temples like a second, painful heartbeat. When she tried to move, a sharp lance of pain shot through her skull, bright as lightning.
Then she saw him.
"Dad."
Logan Hunter sat up straight in the leather chair beside her bed, his tailored Tiger of Sweden suit rumpled from twenty hours of travel. His sharp, dark eyes the same deep shade as her own were shadowed with exhaustion and something far, far more dangerous. He'd flown back from Singapore the instant he'd received the call, abandoning a multi-billion rand merger to sit vigil over his daughter.
The most powerful Black man in South African business, reduced, in this moment, to a worried father clutching a cold cup of coffee.
"Cassandra."
His voice was calm, controlled, yet she could hear the raw fury thrumming underneath the kind of cold, quiet rage that had built empires and destroyed enemies with equal, ruthless efficiency.
"Tell me everything."So she did...She recounted the fight with Jake, how it had escalated beyond anything she'd ever experienced in their volatile relationship. The terrifying speed of his hand, the sickening crack of palm against cheek echoing in their penthouse like a gunshot.
The metallic taste of blood in her mouth as she stumbled backward. The terrifying moment her vision had tunneled to black when her head connected with the unforgiving Italian marble floor that Jake had insisted on importing at ridiculous expense.
She told him about waking up alone, hours later, about the housekeeper finding her in a pool of her own blood. About the ambulance ride, which had felt like floating through a nightmarish fog.
Logan listened without a single interruption, his long fingers steepled under his chin in the familiar gesture she remembered from childhood the one that always meant he was calculating, planning, deciding precisely who would pay for whatever wrong had been committed against his family.
When she finished, the silence stretched between them, taut and vibrating like a pulled wire.
Then, quietly, with the terrifying precision of a surgeon making an incision, he asked:
"And what about Greyson O'Malley?"
Cassie blinked, confusion clouding her already aching head.
"Who?
Logan's gaze sharpened, becoming the piercing, unwavering look that had made grown men confess to crimes they'd only ever thought about committing.
"O'Malley. The man you've been seeing. You slept with him too."
"You mean Greyson Christianson?"
Cassie frowned, trying to push herself up despite the way the movement made her skull feel as though it might split apart
. "How do you even?"
" I make it my business to know who my daughter is involved with."
Logan leaned forward, his voice dropping to the low, resonant tone he reserved for boardrooms when someone had made the fatal mistake of underestimating him.
"His real name is Greyson O'Malley. Son of Owen O'Malley. Former head of the Irish syndicate in Cape Town."
The words hit her like a physical blow, each syllable precisely delivered for maximum, devastating effect. Cassie felt her world tilt sideways, the hospital room suddenly too small, too bright, too terribly real.
"That's impossible."
even as the denial left her lips, she was remembering things. The way Greyson's hands moved with too much precision. The faint, barely visible scars she'd glimpsed on his knuckles. The subtle way he sometimes flinched at sudden, sharp sounds. The haunted, distant look that flickered across his face when he thought she wasn't watching.
Logan reached into his jacket and withdrew a thick manila folder crammed with documents.
"Owen O'Malley ran guns, drugs, and protection rackets from here to Dublin for fifteen years. Officially retired in 2019, but intelligence suggests he still pulls strings from the shadows."
He opened the folder, revealing photographs that made Cassie's blood turn to ice water in her veins
. "This is your Greyson at eighteen, standing next to his father at a funeral for three men who died in a territorial dispute.
This is him at twenty-one, entering the University of Cape Town medical school under his assumed name."
The photographs were grainy, faded, but unmistakable. A younger Greyson, somehow harder, colder, wearing the same storm-gray eyes but without the careful warmth she'd grown to love. In one image, he stood beside a man who could only be his father the same sharp jawline, the same dangerous stillness.
"He's a doctor?"
The words came out as a fragile whisper.
"Was. Until something happened in 2018 that made him disappear from medicine entirely."
Logan's expression softened, just fractionally.
"I don't know what it was. That information is sealed tighter than state secrets. But whatever it was, it was significant enough to make Owen O'Malley's son abandon everything and rebuild himself as a businessman."
Cassie stared at the photographs until they blurred into meaningless shapes. Every conversation they'd shared, every gentle touch, every intimate moment of connection had it all been a lie?
"You're investigating him?"
"I investigate everyone who gets close to my family."
"Maybe he's trying to escape it."
The words came out desperate, clinging to hope like a drowning woman clutching at a piece of driftwood
. "Maybe he changed his name because he wante
Logan's expression grew impossibly gentle, the way it had when she was eight and he'd had to explain, as best he could, why her mother had died.
"Sweetheart, men like Owen O'Malley don't let their children simply walk away. Blood is blood. Family is family. And in their world, both mean everything."
He reached for her hand, his fingers warm and reassuring against her suddenly cold skin.
"I need you to understand something, Cassandra. These people aren't characters in some movie. They're real, they're dangerous, and they don't play by the rules that govern the rest of us. If Owen O'Malley's son is in your life, it's either because he wants something from our family, or because his father does."
Cassie closed her eyes, feeling hot tears leak from beneath her lashes.
"You could be wrong."
"I could be." Logan's thumb traced slow, gentle circles on the back of her hand. "But I've built my life on being right about people. And everything I've learned about the O'Malleys tells me that Greyson is either a victim of his circumstances or a willing participant. Either way, he's dangerous to you."
"What are you going to do?"
Logan was quiet for a long, heavy moment. When he spoke, his voice carried the unshakeable weight of absolute certainty.
"I'm going to make Jake Turner regret ever laying a hand on you. That much I promise... And then I'm going to have a conversation with Mr. O'Malley about his intentions regarding my daughter."
"Dad, please.."
"This isn't negotiable, Cassandra." Logan stood, smoothing his suit jacket with practiced efficiency, a formidable presence once more.
"You're hurt, you're vulnerable, and you're not thinking clearly right now. That's understandable. I won't stand by and watch my daughter get caught in the crossfire of whatever game the O'Malleys are playing."
He moved toward the door, then paused, his hand on the handle.
"For what it's worth, I hope I'm wrong about him. I hope he's exactly who he's pretended to be,I hope isn't a strategy, sweetheart, and I didn't build this family by taking chances with the people I love."
After he left, Cassie lay in the sterile silence, staring up at the stark ceiling, trying desperately to reconcile the man who'd held her while she cried with the grainy photographs of a stranger wearing his exact face.
Outside her window, Cape Town stretched toward the horizon, beautiful and brutal in the morning light. Somewhere out there, Greyson was living his carefully constructed life, utterly unaware that his past had finally, inexorably, caught up with him.
For the first time since she'd ever met him, Cassie wondered if she'd ever truly known him at all. Truth be told she loved him everything about him.