Cassian's Point of View
Cassian Roque Velarco arrived at his office two hours earlier than usual, but the sunrise felt like it came too late.
He didn't plan to beat the light; it simply happened. Sleep had been restless, fickle, like a stranger who kept knocking but never came in. And so he got up before the alarm, dressed in silence, and drove through streets that hadn't yet remembered they were alive.
The city was still yawning, lights flickering against the dull gray of dawn, buildings cloaked in half-shadow. He parked underground, rode the elevator alone, and let himself into his floor without turning on a single switch. The glass walls of his office caught the faintest wash of morning blue, and he let it linger. The kind of silence that hovered without asking permission.
He sat in the dark.
Not because he didn't know how to fill the room with light—but because he couldn't bring himself to.
There was something about silence that had started to unnerve him. Not all silence. Just this kind. This weightless kind. The kind that wrapped itself around your thoughts and made them echo.
Cassian leaned back in his chair, arms resting on the armrests like he couldn't decide whether to hold onto control or let himself collapse.
He had spent years building his life like a machine that couldn't break. Oil-tight. Polished. Beautiful in its design. There was a time it thrilled him to walk into rooms and know he was the sharpest mind there. The most prepared. The most impossible to replace.
But now, everything felt like it was running without him.
He stared at his phone screen, still faintly lit from the message that arrived last night. No name. No subject. Just words that wouldn't leave him:
Do you ever wonder if you chose the wrong life?
He hadn't replied. Hadn't even breathed too deeply after reading it. At first, he told himself it was spam. Or worse, sentimentality from someone who didn't know the cost of ambition.
But now, hours later, alone in a room built to impress, the question settled inside him like dust that never left.
He thought of Selene. Of the way her voice used to fill their apartment. The way she used to laugh without looking over her shoulder. Now she moved like she was always on her way out of the room—even when she wasn't.
He tried to remember the last time they had a conversation that wasn't about scheduling. Or furniture. Or logistics.
He couldn't.
And it wasn't even about fighting. That would've been easier.
This was about absence. The kind that didn't slam doors or shout, but rather crept in through tiny pauses in conversation. The kind that looked like two people who remembered how to live together, but forgot how to be with each other.
He ran a hand over his jaw and exhaled.
It wasn't that he didn't love her. He did.
But somewhere along the way, love became something he assumed would take care of itself.
And maybe that was the beginning of the mistake.
He stood from his desk, his movements slow, almost reluctant. The windows stretched wide before him, offering a view of the city—silver, sleeping, unaware.
From here, he looked like a man who had it all.
He used to believe that meant something. That if you built an empire carefully enough, nothing could touch you.
But no one tells you that success has a sound.
And it's not applause.
It's quiet. Devastatingly quiet.
He pressed a hand against the glass, fingertips cold. His reflection looked back at him—trimmed, pristine, unreadable.
He had once believed in the power of appearances.
Now he wasn't sure what was left beneath them.
Later that evening, long after the city lit up and people began returning to their smaller lives, Cassian returned home. The kind of home that echoed a little too much when only one of them spoke.
He heard Selene in the kitchen. Her voice—soft, speaking into the phone—then fading. He didn't interrupt.
He walked into his study instead.
Closed the door gently behind him.
Not with anger.
But with resignation.
The kind of resignation that doesn't break things. The kind that simply folds.
Cassian sat down, elbows on his knees, head lowered. The silence greeted him again, like an old friend he didn't want to see but didn't have the heart to push away.
He let his eyes wander toward the bookshelf near the window. Tucked there was a collection of poetry he hadn't touched in years. A gift from Selene. Back when things were soft and new, when words mattered and silence was rare.
His fingers brushed over the spine.
He opened to a random page.
"To be loved in silence is to suffer in shadow."
He didn't move for a long time.
Because something about those words felt too precise.
Too close.
Outside, he heard a glass set down on the marble counter. The low hum of the fridge. The quiet life they'd built humming steadily between walls that no longer held them together.
He wondered if she ever felt it too.
If she ever looked across the table and missed him even when he was there.
But he didn't ask.
Because people like Cassian didn't break silence.
They survived it.
And that was the problem.
In the hallway, the sound of footsteps reminded him the day had begun. He straightened his cuffs, put on the mask he wore so well, and rose to meet it.
But something had already shifted.
And no empire, no matter how powerful, is immune to the cracks formed by silence.
Not even his.
Cassian moved mechanically, each step guided by habit more than intent. He passed through the hallway, where the soft hum of the morning's rhythm seemed to punctuate every thought. The city outside was waking up, but the world inside his mind? It was still shrouded in fog.
He paused at the door to the conference room, his hand resting on the cool metal of the handle. The soft click of the door opening was the first sound to greet him. And yet, it felt deafening in the stillness.
The familiar faces of his colleagues stared back at him, their gazes sharp, focused, professional—everything they were supposed to be. His eyes moved over them, but they didn't settle. His mind, restless and unsettled, was already somewhere else. Somewhere he couldn't name.
"Mr. Velarco," came a voice, sharp and smooth like silk.
He nodded absently, already pulling himself back to the present. "Morning, Liza."
She returned his nod, but the briefest flicker in her eyes told him that she noticed something was off. She was sharp, too. They all were. But Cassian was practiced in the art of concealment. He could hide a storm behind a smile if he wanted to. And he did.
The meeting began, but for Cassian, it was a blur. Faces, words, ideas—nothing stuck. The weight of the message, of the unspoken question that lingered like smoke in the back of his mind, was heavier than anything else. Every phrase that came from the board members' mouths was drowned out by the thundering beat of his own thoughts.
He wasn't listening.
Not really.
How could he?
When every second felt like it was drifting further from something real?
He remembered the way Selene had looked at him last night, her gaze distant, her smile absent. She didn't ask, and he didn't tell. They never asked anymore. They simply existed beside each other, like two people who had long forgotten what it felt like to really be with each other.
The cracks had formed in silence. And now they stretched wide, unspoken, between them.
Cassian shifted in his chair, his hand briefly brushing his jaw as though that would ground him. His fingers gripped the pen in his hand, the cold plastic a reminder of how much he was trying to hold onto. But even that didn't feel secure. His grip wasn't firm enough to stop the unraveling.
Do you ever wonder if you chose the wrong life?
His thumb rubbed against the pen's edge. The question circled back again, sharper this time, digging its claws into him. He had always prided himself on knowing exactly what he wanted, on controlling the narrative of his life. But what if it had all been a story written by someone else? What if the choices he'd made were not his own, but the result of a path so deeply ingrained in him that he no longer questioned its direction?
Selene was next to him, but a world away. Their interactions were polite, professional, even affectionate at times—but distant. She smiled when she had to, held his hand when it was expected, but there was nothing there to anchor him anymore.
He wasn't sure when the distance had started. Maybe it had always been there, buried under layers of ambition and success. But now, as the silence between them stretched longer, he felt it. Every touch, every glance was a reminder of the absence, of what they used to have—before everything was about control.
Cassian let the words of the meeting wash over him like static, his mind too far gone to care. The distance between him and his colleagues was vast, but it was nothing compared to the one he felt at home.
The meeting droned on, but he was lost in the quiet of his thoughts. He couldn't escape the weight of what had been building inside him. A feeling, unnameable yet undeniable, settled deeper into his chest. Something was slipping from him, and no amount of success or power was going to stop it.
He thought of the message again.
Had he truly never wondered? Or had he simply been too afraid to admit it to himself?
He knew the answer.
And that scared him more than anything else.
The meeting ended as all things did—swiftly, efficiently, without leaving room for anything more. His colleagues rose to leave, their chatter fading into the background. Cassian lingered a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the empty seat beside him.
The world was still moving around him, but everything inside him had paused. And in the stillness of the room, the question remained. The question that had never been louder.
What if you chose the wrong life?
The door clicked shut behind him as he walked out, and the silence followed him, persistent as ever. He was used to it, but this time, it felt like it had teeth.