Raiden slid back behind the wheel, and she prepared herself for accusations and insults, all of which she told herself she deserved.

But instead, all Raiden said was that Lucius had told him to drive her to a hotel.

"Is that alright?"

No.

It's not alright.

Nothing's alright.

But the words remained stuck in her throat, and Tassy mustered up a smile instead. "Could you take me somewhere else?"

She gave him the address to her old apartment, and Raiden insisted on walking her to her front door and waiting for her to lock up before leaving.

Once she was alone, she looked around and noticed a thin layer of dust covering everything. It felt as if she had walked into a tomb.

Her tomb.

And although she knew her place would be painfully bare, all the empty space just reminded how her empty her own life could be...and would be...if Lucius were to never come back.

Tassy fumbled for her phone with shaking fingers, but her call didn't even push through...with Lucius having already blocked her number.

Please God.

Please.

Please.

Her body curled into a ball on the floor, her eyes still dry even as her heart still hadn't stopped from breaking. The pain she felt when Xylan had broken up with her...suddenly felt like nothing. It was just nothing compared to how much she was hurting now, and oh God...

That said everything, didn't it?

Wind rattled the windows of her apartment, but apart from that, all she heard was silence.

Her phone buzzed, and Tassy snatched it up, hoping against hope it was Lucius.

But instead it was a message from Stella.

Want to see how crazy fake news can get?

Underneath this was a screenshot of a photo of Lucius having dinner with none other than Fontana Ferrer.

It was the perfect revenge, and it got the message across just as perfectly.

Chapter Sixteen

THE VOLUME OF OFFICEnoise abruptly dropped as soon as Tassy showed up at her workplace the next day. There weremorepeople than ever avoiding her gaze, and while she gave her colleagues credit for doing their best not to talk while she was around, some weren't that good at measuring how much distance needed to be kept for one to betrulyout of earshot.

Poor thing...

Twice with the same girl...

Can you just imagine how humiliating that is?

Every minute she spent in front of her computer screen was agony, and Tassy eventually came to realize that as much as she loved her job, it was not worth her sanity. It was time for a fresh start, time to be away from everything and everyone.

The company's HR manager didn't seem surprised at all to receive her resignation letter. "I'm sorry about this, Tassy."