“You should’ve told me,” he said without preamble. “About Selena coming here.”

She didn’t flinch. “I didn’t think it was your business.”

He stepped in anyway, shutting the door behind him. “It is my business when people from the industry—especially someone like Selena—are sniffing around my private life. Around you.”

She folded her arms. “Then you shouldn’t have left me wide open.”

His eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means your mother already warned me off. And then Selena showed up like a second wave of the same script. I wasn’t going to wait around to be cornered again, so…” she lifted her chin slightly. “I told her you had a fiancée.”

The silence was instant—and sharp.

“You what?” he asked, voice low.

“I told her what she needed to hear to back off,” Elara said. “It was the fastest way to end it. Worked like a charm.”

Cassian stared at her for a moment, as if weighing whether to be furious… or impressed.

“I get that you were cornered,” he said finally, “but Elara… do you know what she’s capable of when she feels threatened?”

She met his gaze. “Then maybe she shouldn’t mess with someone she knows nothing about.”

His jaw tightened. “So that’s it? You don’t trust me to protect you, so you’ll burn the field yourself before anyone else can touch it?”

“Don’t pretend like this is about trust,” she said evenly. “You let your family show up unannounced. You never told me you were interested. You said nothing when it could’ve mattered. I was just… adapting.”

His mouth opened slightly, but he didn’t argue.

She was right. She had adapted. Swiftly. Quietly. In a way only someone who’s had to protect themselves before knew how to do.

“I didn’t want this to spiral,” he said.

“It already has,” she replied. “You just didn’t notice.”

He stood there for a second longer, searching for something to say.

But she was already turning away, the message clear.

Selena stared at the cold trail on her laptop, irritation simmering behind her eyes.

“No records, no registry. He’s a ghost,” the investigator had said earlier. “There’s no trace of his family. If he’s from money, they’ve buried it deep.”

She swirled her drink, lips twitching. Ghosts didn’t just walk into stardom. Not without connections. Not without someone pulling strings.

And Elara... Elara knew something.

If she mentioned a fiancée, either it was true—and Cassian was hiding it—or it was a bluff.

But even a bluff said too much.

Selena clicked open her PR burner and crafted her next move—not a leak of truth, but a weaponized whisper.

> “New rumor: Cassian might be dating a girl from campus. No name yet, but someone’s seen them together. Story developing…”

Send.

Let chaos ask the questions for her.

Because if Cassian was hiding something... she’d drag it out into the light. One breadcrumb at a time.