The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 461

Chapter 461
Jace’s POV 

Hearing her soft sigh of relief through the phone feels like absolution. I can be stubborn. I can dig my heels in until I break. But I don’t lie to her. Never to her. If I say I understand, I mean it. The fog in my head is still there, but it’s parting, letting in a harsh, clarifying light.

Her tone shifts, back to business, back to the Gemma I’ve always worked beside. It’s a lifeline. “Take care of things with Jessica over there. Once I’ve wrapped things up on my end, we’ll discuss the future location for the team.”

It’s an order. A plan. A future that includes me, but not in the way I’d dreamed. It’s enough. It has to be. I swallow the last of my self-pity and quietly agree. “Okay.”

The call ends. The silence in the room is different now. Less suffocating.

I look around. While I was on the phone, Jessica has been a whirlwind. The battlefield of empty bottles is gone. Every last one, finished or half-full, has been swept into thick black trash bags. The evidence of my stupidity, my collapse, has been efficiently erased. Just like that.

She’s standing by the door, holding the bulging bags, looking profoundly awkward. She gives me a quick, embarrassed smile that doesn’t reach her worried eyes.

“Uh, so you’re done with the call?” she whispers, as if afraid to shatter the new quiet. “I’ll leave you to rest then. I’ll just… take these out.”

She moves with careful, almost comical precision, tiptoeing over to retrieve her phone from my still-loose grip. Then she hefts the bags, turning to make her escape.

I watch her. This woman who saw me at my worst, who barged in and cleaned up my mess without a word of judgment. She’s trying so hard to be invisible, to not be a burden. A small, genuine smile touches my lips for the first time in days. It’s faint, but it’s real. Her behavior is so earnest, so flustered and kind, it cuts through the last of my haze. It’s amusing. And, against all odds, a little endearing.

Gemma's POV 

The day after Mikhail’s surgery, I arrive at the hospital expecting to find him resting, maybe groggy from pain meds. Instead, I find him sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in the clothes he wore yesterday, trying to shove his feet into his boots. He looks pale, a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead, but his determination is a tangible force in the room.

I stop in the doorway, my bag slipping from my shoulder. “Are you out of your mind?” The words are flat with disbelief.

He doesn’t even look up, just grunts as he tugs at a stubborn lace. “I’m discharging myself.”

“If you dare leave,” I say, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous register I know he’ll recognize, “I’ll freeze every single one of your cards. Don’t forget, Mr. Smith gave me all the passwords.” It’s a nuclear option, but it’s always worked. Money, or the threat of losing access to it, is a language he understands.

He finally glances up, fixing me with a stern, wounded look. “Gemma. You’re really not helping our friendship here.”

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