Bound By A Broken Night novel Chapter 5

With these credentials, I’ll be frank with you, Miss Knowles—we don’t have a position for you here.”

The recruiter barely glanced at me as she slid my résumé back across the desk.

“You might want to try applying for blue-collar work,” she continued briskly. “Janitorial services. Kitchen assistant positions.”

I swallowed, my fingers tightening around the thin paper.

“We value honesty in this company,” she added, her tone cooling further, “and given the scandal you were involved in, I don’t believe you’re the right fit. I don’t think I can trust you.”

The meeting was over before I could even nod.

As I stepped out of the building, I released a long, weary sigh, the echo of rejection clinging to me like a second skin. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those words—and I knew, with quiet certainty, it wouldn’t be the last.

I had tried. God, how I had tried.

I went from office to office, résumé in hand, rehearsing smiles and answers, hoping—foolishly—that someone would see past my name. But with my credentials, it felt impossible. My grades were poor, the result of years spent shrinking myself for someone else’s success.

And even when that wasn’t enough to disqualify me, there was always the same invisible wall.

The scandal.

No matter where I went, it followed me.

No matter how hard I tried to move forward, my name—forever tangled with Ashton and the Knowles family—kept slamming doors shut in my face.

“Why are you so cruel to me, Bay City?”

The question curved into a faint, humorless smile as I watched the sun sink toward the horizon. I sat on the cool grass beside the lagoon, the water catching fire with streaks of gold and amber, as though the city could still pretend to be kind.

Nearby, families spread picnic blankets across the lawn. Soft laughter drifted through the air. Couples leaned into one another. Children chased the fading light, carefree and loud.

And then there was me—resting my aching legs after walking for hours, circling buildings that had already rejected me before I ever stepped inside.

I needed a job. I needed something—anything.

But Bay City seemed determined to shut every door in my face.

“Do I really have no place here?” I murmured, lifting my gaze to the sky now painted in soft orange and bruised pink, as though the answers might be written between the clouds.

I drew in a shaky breath as the realization settled heavily in my chest.

“Bay City is not for you, Cassidy,” I whispered into the open air, my eyes drifting over the tranquil scene before me.

Beautiful.

Indifferent.

Unforgiving.

“Ashton is right,” I let out a quiet, bitter chuckle. “You’re pathetic.”

The word tasted sour on my tongue—but it felt honest.

All my life, I had been desperate to belong. I bent myself into shapes I no longer recognized, trying to earn my father’s approval, his wife’s tolerance, my half-sister’s acceptance. I even tried with Ashton.

And I had been so stupid—so painfully naïve—not to see the truth sooner.

No matter what I did, I would never be accepted by my father’s family. To them, I wasn’t a daughter or a sister.

I was a reminder.

Living proof of my father’s betrayal.

A mistake that refused to disappear.

If I hadn’t been so foolish, I could have excelled in school. If I hadn’t lived my entire life trapped in Mirriam’s shadow, companies in Bay City might have been begging me to join them. If I hadn’t tried so hard to fit into a place where I was never meant to belong—

I wouldn’t be sitting here now, talking to a city that had already decided I didn’t exist.

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