Chapter 2: Still Family
The divorce went through swiftly, quietly.
No announcements. No scenes. No family drama, because no one knew. Their parents didn’t know. Not yet. That confrontation would come later, if ever. Cassidy didn’t owe them anything anymore.
Cassidy didn’t plan it that way to be cruel. She just couldn’t bear another negotiation over her life. And surprisingly, Zeke didn’t fight her decision to keep it between just the two of them.
Cassidy and Zeke had signed the papers in silence, like two strangers politely ending a business contract. And just like that, four years of shared walls, shared beds, and shared silences were over.
But she owed something to the two people who had treated her the most like family.
Even if they only did so because she had Zeke’s name.
Zeke’s grandparents.
Not his parents, not the business partners, not the press but Bastiano Salvador, Zeke’s paternal grandfather, and Grandmother Elise, his maternal grandmother. They had embraced Cassidy since the day she joined the family. Not for the alliance, not for her pedigree but as a person.
Before the papers were finalized, Cassidy visited them both, separately. They lived alone now in different wings of the sprawling Salvador estate, each attended by long-trusted staff, still regal in presence despite age slowly catching up to them.
The first visit was to Bastiano.
He greeted her at the door himself.