The Devil's Favourite Obsession

”You can’t let him take us!” Cixi yelled in raw panic. She shook her head desperately, aggressively grabbing Cassian’s tailored arm before she could stop herself.

Cassian slowly looked down at her small, trembling hand tightly gripping his bicep. The physical contact was shockingly intimate in a room completely filled with psychos, while his expression proudly remained painfully passive.

”The matter is strictly between you and them,” Cassian replied to Cixi, easily dismissing her terror as if she were discussing the food menu.

”Don’t you remember me?!” Cixi glared fiercely into his pitch-black eyes, her own bright grey irises practically burning with outrage. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

How could he be so incredibly cold suddenly?

”Do you honestly think I am interested in playing Guess Who with a female?” Cassian countered smoothly in his low infuriating drawl voice that made her want to hit him.

Cixi completely couldn’t understand him. Hadn’t he just tucked her hair affectionately behind her ear mere moments ago? Hadn’t he carefully adjusted her wrinkled dress? Why was he intentionally acting like a stranger now? What is wrong with him?

”Do you have an identical twin?” Cixi demanded, entirely discarding any care for who was actively listening to their argument. ”Are you fooling others by presenting yourself as Cassian Crown? Are you not the one who came aggressively looking for me? The exact same man who kidnapped me not once, but twice, and proudly marched down the crowded street loudly telling strangers we were having a lovers’ banter?!... You must be a scoundrel who simply happens to look identically like Cassian Crown!”

He matched her furious glare without blinking once, easily absorbing her explosive anger and leaving her feeling helpless. But she refused to back down.

”I was right next to you! Correction! I was sitting literally on your lap when the two trucks and the car violently hit us on the bridge! Are you seriously sitting there telling me you clearly remember the bridge accident, but you magically don’t remember ’Me’?!” Seconds painfully stretched into a suffocating minute, and he remained silent.

When Cassian finally tilted his perfect head, a dark, mocking light entered his black eyes. ”Are you the woman who made vast circles of false rumours about me having a fiancée?”

The sheer audacity of the man! Cixi aggressively gritted her teeth.

’Fine,’ she decided internally. ’If you are going to behave so arrogantly to entertain yourself tonight, Cassian Crown, then let me proudly tell you this.’

”I am your Fiancée, Cixi McLore!” she announced loudly, throwing her narrow shoulders back with incredible defiance. ”I know you confidently have many women occupying your highly questionable life! But I never imagined you would forget me and lump me in with those other women. You literally dropped to your knees and begged me to accept your marriage proposal!” Her chest heaved violently. She courageously threw everything she had into the massive lie, passionately praying it made her sound important enough to somehow stop him from tossing her to Binge’s men. ”We still are engaged!

”I begged you to marry me?” A wicked amusement flickered behind his impenetrable mask. ’Why does begging a woman drastically not sound like something I would genuinely do...?’

”Yes, you absolutely did!” Cixi lied flawlessly, driven by the staggering desperation to save her friends’ lives. ”Even though I am clearly not your usual type, you dramatically fell for me the exact moment your eyes miraculously met mine. Like an utterly unhinged madman, you constantly kept looking for me immediately after the accident! You completely lost your mind when I disappeared! You can ask your own cousin Emily for the video that perfectly captured your obsession over me!”

Every single person currently standing in the green room stopped breathing instantly.

Marion and Lily stood absolutely paralysed, forcefully exchanging wide-eyed, completely dumbfounded looks. Their deeply introverted friend, who actively ran away from any remotely romantic love interests, was mysteriously Cassian Crown’s rumoured fiancée.... Since precisely when?

’If she is engaged to the King of the Underworld,’ Marion thought wildly, ’then what about Officer Bill?’

”And do you have any absolute proof of these incredible claims?” Cassian challenged her.

Cixi aggressively snapped her small purse open, desperately digging past her phone, fiercely pulling out the heavy silver coin he had given her earlier.

She held it up firmly, directly in front of his arrogant face, so the harsh green light perfectly caught the pristine engraving. The legendary mafia token guaranteed his absolute, unquestionable protection.

”You gave this to me. ”You can confirm exactly where you previously registered me with this undeniable coin,” she replied confidently, lifting her trembling chin to challenge the Devil himself boldly.

Cassian slowly took the heavy silver metal directly from her small palm. He lazily flipped it over his heavily scarred fingers, meticulously examining the flawless engraving for a long, agonising moment before shifting his devastatingly passive gaze directly back to her defiant face.

Closing his impossibly long fingers entirely around the heavy coin, Cassian smoothly retrieved his phone from his tailored pocket. He confidently dialled a highly encrypted number, pressing the speaker button so everyone in the room could clearly hear.

”Mark,” Cassian spoke deeply into the receiver. ”Do you privately know of any woman actively claiming the name Cixi McLore?”

”That’s the incredibly prominent name currently attached to your files, Boss,” Mark immediately replied through the loudspeaker, completely unaware of the massive audience actively listening. ”Your highly rumoured fiancée. And the specific girl you violently threw the entire organisation into overdrive to find because you were quietly attached heavily to her disappearance.”

Cassian’s jaw ticked powerfully. ”Why have you absolutely not told me this critically important information before?”

”I am incredibly sorry, Boss. You were heavily recovering,” Mark said nervously, easily offering absolutely nothing more.

Cassian disconnected the call aggressively. He stared intensely directly into Cixi’s wide, grey eyes, mapping every single defiant contour of her flushed face, before slowly turning his profoundly dangerous gaze directly back to the severely sweating Binge.

”She confidently has the coin, Binge,” Cassian stated softly, leaving absolutely zero room for any incredibly foolish argument. ”You cannot touch her or her two terrified friends under my strict roof.”

Binge gritted his teeth, recalling the face he had seen when he woke up that morning. He muttered under his breath, frustrated that he couldn’t seek out the girl who could have fetched him millions if he had sold her. She was perfect for the black market. Did she really have to end up as his rumoured fiancée?

”I will personally take your useless eyes out of your skull if you absolutely don’t stop looking at her,” Cassian gave a final warning to Binge, expecting him to behave.