The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 411

Chapter 411

Gemma’s POV

The grip on my arm is startling, a brand of heat and possession through the silk of my sleeve.

I yank my arm free, the motion sharp. “Is there a problem?”

My voice is cool, a direct challenge. Where I go ceased being his business the day the divorce decree was signed.

Cassian opens his mouth, but for a second, no sound comes out. He looks… unanchored.

“You… can’t go,” he finally manages, the words more a plea than a command.

A short, incredulous laugh escapes me. “Why not?”

The question hangs between us, stark and simple. The old chains are broken. I am free to move, to breathe, to leave.

My bluntness seems to physically wind him. He stares, his eyes searching my face as if the answer to a different question might be written there. After a long, tense moment, his voice drops, rough with an emotion I refuse to name. “Are you really going with him?”

I nod, a single, definitive dip of my chin. “Of course.” It’s the truth. I gave Mr. Smith my word. I will see Mikhail through his surgery. What happens after that is a blank page, but for now, the destination is set.

“Will you come back?”

The question is quiet, laced with a melancholy so deep it surprises me. He sounds afraid. Afraid that if I step onto that plane, I will vanish from his world for good.

The truth is, I haven’t thought that far. “Not sure yet,” I say honestly.

But his fear plants a seed. Until he said it, the idea of leaving this city and this country, hadn’t fully formed. I stayed for my mom… and she is gone.

I could work from anywhere, so truly, what is left to anchor me here? The thought of a clean slate, an ocean between me and this tangled past, suddenly feels less like unning and more like… breathing.

I see the panic flash in his eyes at my uncertainty. He grasps for leverage, for guilt. “What about your mother? Are you going to leave her alone in the cemetery every year?”

The audacity of it, him using my mother as a bargaining chip, sends a cold fury straight through my heart. I keep my expression an icy mask. “I could have her moved. It’s not an impossibility.’

The words are brutal, a deliberate severing of the sentimental tie he’s trying to bind me with.

He recoils as if struck. “You’d move your mother’s grave… just to be with him?”

The hurt and disbelief in his voice are palpable.

He props me up, but my vision swims. All I can see are fragments of her… the curve of her cheek as she laughed earlier, the cold set of her jaw as she told me to grow up. Liam’s words are just noise, a distant buzz.

“The party’s winding down,” he’s saying, grunting as he adjusts his hold. “You never stick around this late. Unless…” He follows my bleary, fixed stare across the room, to where she’s now standing with Zina. “Ah. Right. The ex-wife.”

He starts maneuvering me toward an exit. “Look, if you can’t let her go, then do something about it. Actually try and be decent. But this?”

He gestures at me, at the empty glass in my other hand. “This just guarantees she stays an ‘ex. Permanently.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. My pride has been a fortress, and I’ve demanded she scale its walls on her own.

No one could tolerate that siege forever.

Then I see Mikhail approach her. He says something and she nods. The group: her, Zina, Wesley turns as one, beginning to move toward the main doors. They’re leaving… taking her away.

A raw, unthinking urgency electrocutes my drunken haze. I shove away from Liam, surging to my feet. The world lurches violently. My legs buckle, and I pitch forward.

“Damn it, Cassian!” Liam’s arms shoot out, catching me with a grunt of effort, keeping me from face-planting10:31 onto the marble. “Will you stop acting like a lovesick teenager? I never knew you had this in you!”

The embarrassment is a dull throb beneath the panic. I wrench myself from his grasp, ignoring the spinning room. My focus narrows to the retreating figure in the Van Gogh dress. I have to… I need to…..

Stumbling due to my shoes skidding on the slick floor, I hurry after her, like a man chasing a ghost that’s already halfway out the door.