Chapter 140 Dante
Cassie
The Gulfstream touched down at Teterboro just after sunset, the private jet slicing through clouds painted orange and pink by the dying light. I pressed my forehead against the cool window, watching the familiar landscape materialize below—the sprawl of New Jersey giving way to the glittering towers of Manhattan across the Hudson River. The city looked like a circuit board from this height, all lights and geometric precision, beautiful and cold and utterly indifferent to the small human dramas playing out within its steel and glass canyons.
I'd told myself during the entire flight that returning wouldn't affect me. Three years was enough time to build scar tissue over old wounds. Three years was enough distance to view my past with clinical detachment. Three years should have been enough to make New York just another city instead of the site of my greatest humiliation.
I'd been lying to myself.
The car service delivered me to my building in Tribeca just after eight o'clock. The doorman Tim, who'd been working there for fifteen years—barely concealed his surprise.
"Ms. Hunter! We weren't expecting you. Welcome back."
"Just for a few days, Timothy," I replied, managing a smile that felt like it belonged on someone else's face. "Business."
"Of course. Should I have your usual parking spot cleared?"
"No need. I won't be driving."
The elevator ride to the penthouse on the thirty-second floor felt interminable. I caught my reflection in the mirrored wallsI looked exactly like what I was: a woman wearing expensive armor. My charcoal suit was impeccable, my hair pulled back in a severe bun, my makeup minimal but flawless. I looked successful. Powerful. Completely in control.
I looked like a stranger.
The penthouse was exactly as I'd left it, preserved like a museum exhibit of my former life. My property manager had kept it maintained fresh flowers on the entry table (freesias, always freesias), the hardwood floors polished to a mirror shine, the floor-to-ceiling windows offering that spectacular view of the city I'd once thought would be my kingdom.
I set down my bag and walked through the space slowly, cataloging memories like inventory. The living room where I'd hosted engagement parties. The kitchen where I'd learned Dante preferred his coffee with too much sugar. The guest room where Ella used to stay when she visited, back when we were still sisters in more than just name.
I stopped myself. This was exactly the kind of thinking I couldn't afford.
Pulling out my phone, I saw a string of missed calls. Greyson. Of course. My boyfriend—though that word felt increasingly inadequate for whatever our relationship had become—had been calling since this afternoon. Six missed calls. Three text messages asking where I was, if I was okay, when we could talk.
I stared at the messages, feeling a complicated tangle of guilt and resentment. Greyson was a good man. Steady. Successful in his own right as a corporate attorney. He was exactly the kind of partner I should want—stable, predictable, safe. The problem was that safe had started to feel an awful lot like suffocating.
I should call him back. I should explain that I'd been sent to New York on short notice for business. I should maintain the relationship that everyone expected me to maintain.
Instead, I changed into jeans and a cashmere sweater, grabbed my wallet, and headed back out. The penthouse felt too small, too full of ghosts. I needed air, space, the anonymous comfort of the city streets.
The evening was cool but not cold, that perfect autumn temperature that made New York feel almost magical. I walked without direction, letting my feet make decisions my mind couldn't. I passed couples holding hands, families laughing over dinner at outdoor tables, young professionals arguing about politics over craft cocktails. The city hummed with life, indifferent to my presence, and there was something comforting about that anonymity.
I'd been walking for maybe twenty minutes when I realized I needed actual food, not just the peanuts from the plane. There was a bodega two blocks from my building that stayed open late, the kind of place that sold overpriced basics to wealthy residents who couldn't be bothered to shop like normal people.
I turned the corner onto Warren Street, my mind focused on whether they'd have the good hummus or just the mediocre kind, when I saw them.
Greyson and Ella.
My sister...my adopted sister, but still my sister, the girl who'd shared my childhood and my secrets and eventually my fiancé.
Sitting at a sidewalk café, their heads bent close together in conversation, laughing at something on Greyson's phone. They looked comfortable. Intimate. Like two people who'd done this before, many times, who had private jokes and shared secrets.
The world seemed to tilt sideways. I grabbed the brick wall beside me, needing something solid to anchor myself to reality.
Ella looked good. She always did. Blonde and delicate where I was dark and sharp-edged. Ella had that quality that made people want to protect her, to take care of her. It was what had drawn my parents to adopt her in the first place, what had made twelve-year-old me so eager to have a little sister.
It was probably what had drawn Dante to her too, that night three years ago.
Now Ella was here, in New York, with Greyson. History repeating itself in the cruelest way possible.
I watched them through a haze of disbelief. Greyson said something and Ella threw her head back, laughing, her hand landing on his arm with casual familiarity. It was such a small gesture, but it spoke volumes. This wasn't a chance encounter. This was comfortable. Established. Real.
My hand moved before my brain fully engaged, raising my phone, opening the camera, capturing the image with a click that seemed obscenely loud in my own ears even though no one else could possibly hear it. I pulled up Greyson's contact and attached the photo. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard for only a second before typing:
"I see you've moved on to the next Hunter sister. Congratulations."
I hit send before I could reconsider.
Then, without watching to see if he'd check his phone, without waiting to witness his reaction, I turned on my heel and walked blindly in the opposite direction. My eyes were blurring with tears I refused to let fall. Not here. Not on a public street where anyone might see. Hunter women didn't cry in public. Hunter women didn't show weakness. Hunter women never...
I collided with something solid and warm. A familiar scent hit my nostrils. I wanted to puke.
"Whoa, I'm so sorry." a male voice began.
I looked up, my apology dying unspoken.
It was Dante.
Of course it was Dante, apparently the universe had decided that tonight was the night to serve up every nightmare from my past on a silver platter.
He looked older, which made sense three years did that to people. His dark hair was shorter than I remembered, threaded with a bit more gray at the temples. He'd always been handsome in that effortless way some men managed, but there was something harder about him now, like life had filed away some of his softer edges.
It wasn't Dante who made my breath catch in my throat.
It was the little girl holding his hand.
Sophia.
She was beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful. Maybe three years old now, with Ella's blonde curls and Dante's dark eyes, wearing a pink dress with a tulle skirt that suggested they'd been somewhere special. She looked up at me with innocent curiosity, completely unaware that she was the physical embodiment of the worst day of my life.
The daughter born from betrayal. The child conceived in a coat closet during my rehearsal dinner while I had been giving a speech about love and commitment and forever.
"Cassie?" Dante said, his voice carrying a complicated mix of surprise, guilt, and something that might have been concern. "I didn't know you were in town."
I couldn't speak. My throat had closed up entirely. I was staring at Sophia, at this little girl who existed because my sister and my fiancé had gotten drunk and destroyed everything, who had never asked to be born into such a mess, who was completely innocent of the sins of her parents.
"Say hello, sweetheart," Dante prompted gently, and Sophia waved shyly, a tiny hand movement that was somehow devastating in its innocence.
The simple gesture broke something in my chest. This child this beautiful, blameless child—was Ella's daughter. Was being raised by Dante. Was the constant reminder that the two people I had loved most in the world had betrayed me in the most intimate way possible.
I shook my head—at what, I wasn't sure. At the situation. At the unfairness of it all. At the fact that Sophia existed and was beautiful and innocent while my life had been destroyed to create her.
Without a word, I stepped around them and walked away, my vision swimming with unshed tears.
"Cassie, wait!" Dante called after me, but I didn't stop, didn't slow, just kept walking until his voice faded behind me. I heard him say something to Sophia, probably explaining why the strange lady had looked at her so sadly, and that made everything worse. She was innocent but I wasn't ready to play happy family.