“Is Elodie safe with you right now?”
Cassian looked down at his daughter.
“Yes.”
“Keep her with you. Touch nothing else unless you have to. I’m calling the authorities and the trust office.”
The trust office.
Cassian looked at the photograph again.
Sabine sank onto one of the fallen suitcases.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“You’re making a spectacle out of a family disagreement,” he said.
Cassian almost laughed.
Instead he held up the forged document.
“My daughter had a one-way travel plan I did not authorize. My signature is on a form I did not sign. My dead wife left me a warning with your name on it. Which part would you like me to treat as a disagreement?”
Adrian looked toward the hangar doors.
Two security officers were already approaching.
For the first time, his composure cracked.
Sabine saw it too.
“Adrian,” she whispered.
He did not look at her.
That was the moment Cassian understood that whatever loyalty existed between them had limits.
He handed the passport and the forged form to the senior security officer and asked him to secure the scattered documents until police arrived. Then Cassian moved Elodie farther away, to a small office behind the hangar reception desk where the glass wall still gave him a view of the floor.
He knelt in front of her.
“You are not going anywhere.”
She stared at him as if she needed more than the sentence.
“Not with Sabine. Not with Adrian. Not tonight. Not after the wedding. Not ever unless you and I both know where you are going and you are safe.”
Her face crumpled.
“There isn’t going to be a wedding, is there?”
Cassian looked through the glass at Sabine.
“No.”
Elodie’s shoulders dropped in relief so obvious that shame went through him.
He had never asked whether his happiness frightened her.
