Chapter 6: What Cassandra Found in the Studio
The rehearsal studio occupied the top floor of a converted warehouse in River North.
Cassandra had rented it for eleven years — long before Julian, long before the engagement, long before she had become the kind of woman who arrived at parties in silver gowns.
The mirrors ran the full length of one wall.
The floors were sprung hardwood, worn pale in the center from ten thousand hours of use.
A single lamp burned near the piano in the corner.
Cassandra sat on the floor in the middle of the room, still in the clothes she had worn when she left the hospital.
Her feet were bare.
She had her phone in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other.
Julian came through the door alone.
He had told Marcus to wait in the car.
Cassandra looked up.
She did not seem surprised to see him.
"I found it in my coat pocket," she said.
She held up the folded paper.
"Someone put it there tonight.
At the party.
I didn't notice until I was in the hospital and a nurse handed me my things." She paused.
"I think it was meant to be found after — after you were gone."
Julian crossed the room and crouched in front of her.
He took the paper from her hand and opened it.
It was a single typed line: *Ask Cassandra what she told Victor DeLuca about Claire Arden.*
He looked at her.
Her eyes were red but dry.
She had been crying and had stopped and had moved past it into something quieter and more serious.
"I didn't know what he was," she said.
"I need you to believe that."
"I know you didn't."
"I met him at a charity event eighteen months ago.
He was charming.
He said he was your cousin.
He asked about you — how you were, whether you seemed happy, whether you had moved past — " She stopped.
"Whether you had moved past a loss you had suffered some years ago.
I thought he was being kind.
I thought he cared about you." Her voice tightened.
"I told him you had started asking about a woman named Claire.
I told him you seemed unsettled.
I told him I didn't know who she was but that she clearly mattered." She pressed her lips together.
"I gave him the thing he needed to decide to act."
"Cassandra."
"I nearly got you kjlled."
"You didn't know."
"That doesn't make it — "
"No," Julian said.
"It doesn't.
But it changes what it means." He folded the paper.
"Victor used you.
That is on Victor."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Who is she?
Claire Arden.
Who was she?"
Julian sat down on the floor across from her.
The mirrors reflected them both — two people sitting on worn hardwood in the middle of the night, the wreckage of an evening between them.
"She was the woman I loved before you," he said.
"She disappeared four years ago.
I thought she had left.
I thought she had chosen to go." He paused.
"She didn't leave.
She was trying to reach me.
She was carrying my child."
Cassandra was very still.
"The little girl," she said.
"Lily."
"Yes."
She closed her eyes.
She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.
When she opened her eyes again, they were bright but steady.
"The bluebird turn," she said softly.
"Claire invented it.
She taught it to Lily before she d*ed.
She knew I would recognize it.
She planned it — she planned for Lily to find me this way, if everything else failed."
Cassandra looked at the ceiling.
A long breath moved through her.
"She trusted a dance more than she trusted words.
Because words can be intercepted." She paused.
"She was smarter than all of us."
"Yes," Julian said.
"She was."
The room held that for a moment.
"The engagement," Cassandra said.
Her voice was careful and very even.
"I think we both know what it means now.
What tonight means."
Julian did not look away from her.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry." She shook her head slightly.
"Be honest.
That's rarer and more useful." She looked at the mirrors.
At her own reflection.
"I spent tonight on my knees on a marble floor, holding a four-year-old girl and remembering that I used to dance because I loved it.
Not because I was afraid of losing." She paused.
"That child gave me something back tonight.
Before everything went wrong."
"She tends to do that."
A small, real smile crossed Cassandra's face.
It disappeared quickly.
"Victor.
What happens now?"
"Marcus has people moving tonight.
Victor won't reach morning without being found."
"And the man who p*isoned the glass?
The chemist?"
"We have his name and address."
Cassandra looked at him steadily.
"Julian.
Do it the right way.
Whatever you're thinking — do it the right way.
For Lily's sake.
That child cannot grow up inside the version of this family that handles things in the dark." She held his gaze.
"You know I'm right."
Julian was quiet for a moment.
"I know," he said.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
It was Marcus.
"We found Victor," Marcus said.
"He's not alone.
He has someone with him." A pause.
"Sir — it's the chemist, Reyes.
And Reyes has a laptop.
He says he has documentation.
He says he wants to make a deal."
Julian stood up.
"Don't let either of them leave," he said.
"And call Agent Kowalski at the FBI field office.
Tell her I have something she has been waiting four years for."
He looked down at Cassandra.
"Can you walk?" he asked.
She stood up.
She was steadier than she had any right to be.
May you like
"I've been walking in bare feet all night," she said.
"I think I can manage."
