Page 99 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

I stared at her like she’d grown another head. “Are you telling me you had the audacity to spew that nonsense at my wife… because I didn’t leave you drunk in a bar and I laughed once?”

She lifted her chin, a final, defiant gesture. “How would you explain it?”

“Very easily, actually,” I said. The explanation felt absurdly simple. “I didn’t leave you because you’re on my team, and I’m not a monster who leaves drunk, vulnerable people to fend for themselves. And I laughed because you started reminiscing about the time Liam ran through the neighborhood screaming, completely naked, because he thought there was a spider in his pants.”

Rohan, who had been standing there like a silent statue, blinked.

“What was it then?” he asked Liam.

Liam stared at the floor.

“A butterfly,” he muttered.

Rohan’s brows shot up. “How did it even get in your pants—wait, completely naked? Why’d you take off your shirt?”

Liam just shrugged. “I didn’t want to take any chances.”

I let out a long, measured exhale. “You know what, Cassandra? You’ve opened my eyes. The next time I see a member of my team too drunk to stand, I’ll just leave them on the curb. And the next time someone reminds me of a genuinely funny memory, I’ll be sure to scowl. Otherwise, they might get the wrong idea and think we share an ‘unbreakable connection.’”

I was starting to despise that word.

Her eyes desperately searched mine, looking for any crack in my resolve. “You can’t just dismiss me like this—”

“I can,” I stated, my voice hardening into steel. “And I am. Everything you’ve said here today has only proven how dangerously delusional you are, and that bringing you into this company was a catastrophic error in judgment.”

I paused, my gaze flicking to Liam to see if he would defend his sister.

He remained silent, his expression grim.

I turned my full attention back to her. “You’re fired.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” I rounded my desk, dismissing her.

A desperate, calculating look flashed across her face. “If you fire me, my father will pull out of the Aethelstan deal. Do you honestly think he will let it proceed if I’m not here?”

I rested my palms flat on the desk and looked at her, my gaze unwavering. “Then fuck the deal.”

She stared at me, stunned. “You’re bluffing. You’ll lose your company.”

I shrugged, a cold, deliberate gesture. “Then I lose it. But you’re still fired.”

The truth was, I wouldn’t lose it. Months ago, the Aethelstan deal was critical. It was the fastest, most definitive way to stabilize the company and protect every job in it. The sacrifice, the late nights, the distance from Alessia—it was the price of that singular, aggressive play for a rapid return to dominance.

But we weren’t fools. From the moment the crisis hit, we’d been running two plays at once. You never tie a company’s survival to a single client, especially not a man like Hartley, whose volatility and ego could turn a handshake into a corporate hostage situation overnight.

So while I was publicly fighting for Aethelstan, Liam was quietly moving in the shadows from day one: traveling, negotiating, securing a network of smaller but guaranteed contracts.

Aethelstan was our path to dominance.

Liam’s contracts were our insurance policy.

We pursued both with the same ruthless seriousness.

We’d kept the second strategy deliberately small. Only a handful of people on staff knew about it, because the moment Hartley realized we had alternatives, he would have tightened his terms—or walked away altogether. Cassandra, as Hartley’s daughter, had been kept in the dark too.

It was funny, in a hollow way. I had lost my wife because I was lost in that deal for months. But the situation had changed. The company was secure. The team was safe. And from the very beginning, that was the entire point of running both plays.