Chapter 56 CHAPTER 56

Chapter 56 CHAPTER 56
Chapter 56
Laila's Welcome
Laila Kent.

I made dinner today. I didn't order dishes like usual, I didn't ask the housekeeper to prepare the food, but I stayed in the kitchen for almost six hours learning how to cook Cassian's favourite pasta.

I looked at the dustbin where I had trashed a lot of disasters I had made, and breathed a sigh of relief that I made a masterpiece before Cassian could even come back. I quickly prepared salad to go with it, and I found a bottle of wine in the rack that Cassian always liked and left out anytime he knew he was got to take a glass after work.

I had decided that tonight was going to be different. Tonight I was going to be the wife he came home to. I had even changed into the dress I bought in Paris, the dark green silk one that Barbara said made me look like a rich young wife, which was the highest compliment Barbara ever gave anyone.

When I heard the elevator, I smiled in preparation to strike my normal seductive pose that used to get him when we had started dating. Before Aria came into the picture or anything—

Laila, stop! I chided myself immediately. Thinking of Aria felt like a jinx, and I didn't want anything ruining tonight. When the door opened, I was already turning from the kitchen with the smile in place, but my smile died immediately.

Cassian walked in carrying Aria Hartwell. Not carrying her as if she was injured or unconscious in the way of emergencues. She was simply asleep. Her face was pressed into his neck, her shoes were still on, one hand loosely gripping the front of his shirt, and he was moving through his own living room like she weighed nothing and like I did not exist. He didn't look at me. He didn't even pause.

He just walked straight to the guest room at the end of the hall and I stood in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in my hand and watched him go. I looked at the scene for a long time before my legs decided to follow behind him.

He was taking her shoes off when I appeared in the doorway. Carefully, like she was something that could break easily. He set both shoes on the floor beside the bed and pulled the blanket up, and I watched his face the entire time and there was something in it I had never once seen him direct at me.

"What is she doing in our home?" I asked.

He startled. He actually startled, and I was offended. I had been standing there for a full minute and he hadn't noticed me, which was somehow the worst part of all of it. I was his wife! Why would he be startled to see me in OUR house.

"Laila." He straightened his back, his voice low as he placed a finger on his lips as if to shush me. "I didn't know you were back."

"Clearly." I stepped back into the hallway and he followed, pulling the guest room door mostly closed behind him. "But you've not answered my question, Cassian. What is she doing here?"

"She fell asleep in her office. I wasn't going to leave her there alone."

"You could have called her a car, and they would have taken her to her mother's house, or new apartment. Or better still, you could have called her boyfriend, Ethan Calloway."

Cassian visibly winced at that and he gritted his teeth in response. "Ethan is not her boyfriend, and I couldn't do any of that because she was extremely exhausted, Laila."

"Then call—"

"Laila." His voice was patient as if he was trying not to get angry at a toddler he was was speaking to. He made me feel like I was a problem for asking what another woman was doing in our home when we were barely three weeks into marriage. "She's in the guest room. She's sleeping. Nothing is happening."

"That's not the point." I lowered my voice even further, conscious of the door behind him. "The point is that you brought her here. To our home. While you're married to me." I looked at him directly. "You said this marriage was to protect her. To stop the speculation. To give her cover from the board. That was what you told me. That was the agreement."

"Yes."

"So explain to me how bringing her to sleep in our guest room protects anyone from speculation."

He looked at me and he didn't have an answer. He knew it and we both stood in the hallway knowing it together.

"And while we're here," I said, and I kept my voice very steady because this was the thing I had been holding for weeks, the thing that sat in my chest since Paris, "I want you to tell me where you were on our wedding day. The first afternoon even until the evening. The one you gave an excuse with the running stomach. Where were you really, Cassian?"

He went still.

"Because I know you weren't at the office," I said calmly. I didn't have the guts to tell him what I had found out myself, mostly because I was ashamed that it even happened in the first place... That he chose a basic woman over me. "I know you weren't with Mara or with your legal team. I've asked, Cassian. Discreetly. I've asked." I tilted my head. "And the only conclusion I can reach is that you were with her." I felt the tears pooling at the corners of my eyes as my chest burned in pain.

His silence was all the answers I needed. He cheated on me before and during our marriage ceremony. I felt like the biggest joke of the century.

"I won't make a scene," I said quietly. "But understand something. I am your wife. And I am standing in my own home."