Back at the present timeline, Asher has taken Cassidy away in secret.historical

No one from the Millicent's knew that they were together for almost a day now. They went back to the place where they grew up together - a place full of nostalgic feelings and buried memories. It was their home, but as soon as they arrived in their exact destination, they both thought that it didn't look like one anymore.

"W-W-What...?"

At that very moment, Cassidy stands frozen in front of what she has used to call home.

However, the orphanage is no longer there. It is just this vacant lot with a myriad of trees and a lush field of grasses. What's more, it appears to be in the middle of the nowhere. There are no surrounding houses or any nearby structures. It is downright empty of human life and of everything that has once been there.

"W-Where...? W-Where is my family?" Cassidy asked Asher with a terrified look to which he only returned a deeply remorseful and grief-stricken expression.

"I'm sorry, Cassie, but they... There had been a huge fire incident when you were nineteen-year-old. Including the caretaker, almost everyone died. Only five of the orphans had survived."

Hearing that, she felt like breaking into millions of pieces.

Her whole body went numb and stayed unmoving for the next seconds to come. Tears began to pool her eyes before streaming down the sides of her face like a cascade. Incalculable pain and unimaginable grief start to torment her - so, so much that she feels like dying herself right then and there.

'The family I wanted to protect... I worked so hard to keep us from going bankrupt. I could not even focus on my studies anymore. I worked myself to death and protected the children from those who had tried to harm them. I became a delinquent to know my ways around life - to survive everyday alongside them...' Cassidy silently agonized over as she fell on her knees and stooped her head low.

'And yet, in the end, this was what happened.'

She still doesn't know the whole story, but she feels like she can't bear to hear any more. Losing the memory of her family dying was the worst that this amnesia brought her. All this time, she thought that there was still a home that she could go back to. She was raring to reunite with them, but now, there was no one here who would welcome her back.

"I'm sorry for making you go all through this again..." Asher apologized before kneeling down before her and gathering her trembling figure in his arms.

"I also wasn't there to protect you all. We were still in hiding back then. Remember the guy you kept calling Mister Shady?"

"H-Huh...? M-Mister Shady...? W-What about him?" Cassidy questioned hesitantly, appalled at the thought that something similar to this had happened to him.

"We were pursued by the craziest group that had ever chased us, right? The reason why we left this place and cut off ties with you was because we were still being targeted. That was why we hadn't seen one another for many years. It's all good now, though. We grew big and strong enough to at least reunite with everyone we left. In the end, it was all about power and influence. We have enough of them now, and we are no longer a mere gang."

"You had cut off ties with me, Asher. What should I feel? You didn't contact me even once. And now I feel worse knowing that you have been through something like that-"

"I did that to protect you - all of you. We'd been in a tight position for a long time. By not contacting you, I could avoid letting our enemies know that we were connected with you and the orphanage. We could even barely hide the fact that you were with us when we were pursued for the first time. If they were to learn about our relationship, they would have used you against us."

Cassidy falls silent at that, lowering her head even more and biting her lip all the while. She feels more powerless than ever. Everyone had been struggling this whole time, and no matter how hard she worked herself, she felt like she wasn't able to help even just for a bit. It all went down to nothing as soon as her family died from the fire.

But then, they should not have been experiencing this entire thing in the first place if it was not for this unidentified entity who kept messing up with their lives.

"They... Who are they, Asher? Who are these enemies? These pursuers...?" Cassidy muttered vehemently as she looked at him with an incandescent, scorching gaze.

"Don't tell me... Are they the one who also caused the fire?"

Taken aback by the fiery glint in her fuming eyes and how she is able to piece the puzzle together with just those details, Asher takes his turn to be quiet. For a moment, he only keeps staring back at her. That's until he eventually heaves a deep sigh and screws his eyes shut for the big revelation.

"Do you recall Mrs. Maruschca Donovan...?" he brought up all of the sudden, making her eyes widen in nonplus and trepidation.

"Shade and the mastermind behind the fire as well as the man-hunt against our group - they are all related to her.... They're a family."

"Huh? What?" was all she could only blurt out, extremely shell-shocked.

"Mrs. Donovan's grandson is Shade who also happens to be your husband, Adrian Millicent. On the other hand, the mastermind is her husband, Mr. Grisham Donovan - your grandfather-in-law. He was behind the fire and the pursuit against us-"

Asher was cut off when he felt Cassidy stirring in his embrace. It was a good thing that he was holding her the whole time.

She suddenly lost strength and fell over. Already overwhelmed by all these revelations, she has reacted so strongly that she ended up feeling weak and nauseous. This may also be because she hasn't gotten enough sleep these past few days.

"Cassie! Cassie! Hey, are you okay?! Cassie!" Asher kept calling in confusion and panic.

Yet at that second, Cassidy already fainted and lost consciousness.

---

"I see... So, you've got a boy you like, huh?"

A dream.

Cassidy is dreaming.

There, she is still around the age of sixteen. She was visiting Maruschca in the hospital. It was quite a rare occasion, especially since the people who were looking after her were very strict with visitors. Ever since she stopped coming over the orphanage, the number of times she went to see her in the hospital was as good as nothing at all.

Maruschca was the one who contacted the caretaker of the orphanage - asking to meet Cassidy once again. That was the only reason why she could step a foot in there. If she did not reach out first, she would never know how she had been doing for the past years.

Even though they didn't often meet, they spent time as casually as they did before. The old lady liked it this way, and the young girl knew that she treasured this kind of moment too.

"Well, you can say that I do have feelings for him, but... Ever since he was gone, there was not a day I didn't think about him. I want to meet him again so bad - or at least, know about how he is doing," Cassidy confessed timidly.

"May I know who this is? Maybe I can help," Maruschca asked with an amused and meaningful smile.

"Oh, come to think of it...! Granny, do you have a grandson?"

"Hmmm...? Yes, I do. Two of them. Why?"

"Does one of them look gloomy, depressing and dull? With grey hair and grey eyes!"

"U-Ummm... All my grandsons have brown hair and blue eyes. I also don't think they look like that. They are all dazzlingly handsome, you know~ Oh, if you want, I can introduce you to one of them-"

"O-Oh, no, no...! It's fine. Nevermind. Forget I asked that."

Even until that time, Cassidy wanted to keep her promise to that guy. She told him that she won't let Maruschca know about his true intention for his visits in the orphanage. But because she was already feeling desperate at that point, she thought of at least asking her if she had a grandson who looked like him. She did assume that they were relatives, after all.

She wanted to take a shot in reuniting with him. But now that she knew that there was no one like that, she decided to stop there - or at least, she tried.

Cassidy thought that this guy must have been an outsider who was not related to Maruschca after all - yet eventually, she learned that she thought wrong.

Because Cassidy only spent time with him for two short months, she could no longer remember how he exactly looked like after many years. But because Maruschca was with him for a good portion of her life, she recognized him right away after she saw a picture of him one day.

"I was keeping this photograph ever since a friend of mine took it. It was out of fun at first - to tease him because he didn't want to take selfies or even a group photo with us. It's blurry since he kept trying to snatch the camera away that time..." was what Cassidy told Maruschca when she brought a blurred photograph of that guy she kept saying she wanted to meet.

"I never realized that I would treasure it so much that I still had it until now."

Right then, Maruschca recognized Adrian almost instantly.