The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 502

Chapter 502

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Gemma’s POV

As Cassian comes back down the stairs, I glance up from dabbing antiseptic on Linda’s reddened shoulder. I see his hand press briefly against the small of his back in a quick, subconscious gesture.

I blink but say nothing.

It’s not my place to ask. My focus is on the woman in front of me, the skin over her collarbone already darkening into the beginnings of a bruise.

“Ms. Marino, thank you,” Linda murmurs, her eyes downcast.

“It’s nothing,” I say softly, capping the ointment. The air in the room is still charged from Vicky’s exit.

Linda then looks past me, her gaze landing on Mikhail, who is studiously examining a pattern on the rug. “Ms, Marino,” she says, her voice trembling slightly but determined, “could I… have a private word with Mikhail?”

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I see Mikhail’s eyes widen in a silent, frantic plea over Linda’s head. No. Don’t leave me. But this is between them. I stand up

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the first aid kit in my hands a convenient excuse. “Of course. You two talk. I’ll just put this away.”

I walk toward the kitchen, deliberately ignoring the desperate, helpless look Mikhail shoots me. Some battles he has to fight alone.

Instead of going inside, I push open the French doors and step out into the cool night, right into the garden. A soft lamp illuminates a stone bench where Cassian is sitting, his silhouette tense. The first aid kit feels heavy in my hands.

Hearing my footsteps on the gravel, he looks over. “What are you doing out here?”

He asks, his voice a low rumble in the quiet.

I don’t answer. I just walk over and sit beside him on the cool stone, placing the kit between us. The gentle light falls across his profile. “Did your grandpa hit you?”

In our three years together, I saw it a handful of times. Grandpa’s furious disappointment manifests in a swift, unsparing strike with that cane of his. I guess, even after stepping down as the Don, his habits haven’t changed a lot.

It’s just that, poor Cassian ends up being the target now.

Qassian lets out a short, breathy laugh. “It’s nothing.

a tap24

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with a cane.”

He’s being nonchalant, but I know better. I turn to look at him, a flicker of old frustration in my eyes. The same frustration that used to simmer when he used to dismiss his own pains or stresses, building that impassable wall of stoicism.

“Let me take a look,” I say, my tone leaving no room for argument.

He hesitates. The injury is on his back. Out here, in the semi–darkness of the garden, it would mean taking off his shirt. Seeing his reluctance, a thread of worry pulls tight.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. Is it serious?

Before I can finish the thought, he tugs at the collar of his shirt with a faint, wry smirk. “It’s just… not very convenient here. How about we go back inside? To a bedroom, there are at least fifteen inside the mansion…?”

My expression darkens immediately. We are both adults, the implication is clear. This isn’t about seduction; it’s his old habit of deflecting vulnerability with a poorly–timed joke. “Do it, or I’m leaving”

The smirk vanishes. “I’ll take it off. I’ll take it off,” he says quickly, turning his back to me. His fingers work the buttons of his shirt, and he shrugs it off his shoulders, letting it

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around his waist.

The lamplight washes over his bare skin. He’s pale, making the angry, parallel red welts across his lower back stand out in stark, brutal relief. One is already purpling at the edges. It wasn’t a “tap” after all.

I feel a sudden, surprising surge of anger at both, grandpa for his heavy hand and at Cassian for his dismissal.

Wordlessly, I open the kit. I take out an alcohol swab, tear it open. The sharp, clean scent cuts through the garden’s floral sweetness. “This might sting,” I murmur, more out of habit than anything.

He just nods, his back muscles tightening slightly as I dab at the broken skin. I work quickly, efficiently, applying a cool antibiotic ointment from a tube. The silence between us is thick, but not hostile. It’s the quiet of a shared, unspoken history. “All done,” I say softly, recapping the tube. “You can put your shirt back on.”

As he pulls the fabric back over his shoulders, still turned away from me, he speaks. His voice is quieter now, stripped of pretense. “Gemma… don’t be angry with my grandpa. For not telling you.”

I pause in the act of putting the alcohol swab wrapper back in the kit. He’s right, of course. I’m not a fool. The moment grandpa showed up and started narrating old stories

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Bernard–Blackwell alliances and pre–ordained marriages, the pieces clicked. He’d known.

Probably for a long time. The shock of discovering I was a Bernard was profound enough days ago. If I’d learned it while my mother was still alive, if that truth had come while she was struggling, I don’t know how I would have reacted.

The timing, in its own way, was a mercy to both of us.

I carefully close the kit’s latch. “I’m not angry with your grandpa,” I say, and it’s the truth. The emotion is more complex —a weary understanding, a recognition of the vast, complicated games played by people like him.

“We really are connected by fate,” Cassian continues, his voice a low murmur in the dark. He finally turns to look at me, his expression somber. “A marriage pact before we were even born. And then, by some twist, you actually became my wife. It was destiny. And I… I failed to seize it.”

I listen, the words settling over me. I’m still not used to this version of him—this reflective, almost melancholy man. In my memory, he is decisive, impervious, a force of unwavering will. This cautious, regretful person is unfamiliar, and it creates a strange dissonance inside me.

“Cassian,” I say, my own voice quiet but firm. “There’s really no good for you to change anything for me.”

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I think of my younger self, the woman who walked down the aisle believing that if she could just mold herself into the perfect Blackwell wife… quiet, compliant, decorative, she could earn his love.

Reality gave me a harsh, three–year lesson.

I learned that a lasting relationship isn’t about one person contorting themselves to fit the other’s blueprint. It’s about two whole people choosing each other, flaws and all. It’s about mutual acceptance, a harmony found not in sameness, but in the respectful space between differences.

Constant compromise isn’t a foundation; it’s a slow erosion. If we can’t accept each other as we truly are: all the good, the stubborn, the flawed parts of us, then we simply don’t fit.

Change under duress might last a season, but not a lifetime. And the last thing I want is for him to spend his life walking on eggshells, performing a version of himself he thinks I want.

I hear him swallow hard. In the lamplight, his eyes are shadowed. “Gemma,” he asks, the question raw and stripped bare, “are we… really impossible?”

I don’t answer immediately. I look away from him, up at the scattered stars just visible between the palm fronds. I search my own heart.

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