From the Ashes (Syndicate of the Legion #3)

11. Camilla

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CAMILLA

I stare at the bullet trapped between Bishop’s fingers as silence falls upon the room. The only sound is my ragged breathing as I clutch my shoulder while we all take in the sight in front of us.

Someone was in here.

Someone was in my bedroom.

There’s something violating about the idea of a stranger in here. A stranger touching the bed I lost my virginity in. A stranger who is clearly intent on hurting me.

“How the fuck did someone get in here?” Crew growls, his voice so low I’d probably find it in myself to be scared if I wasn’t already internally freaking out.

This is meant to be the safest place in the city. No one even knows where the compound is. It’s an unsolved mystery among the five families, and one that they’ve repeatedly tried to solve over the years.

“There’s no way someone could get in here,” Bishop says. “We’re the only people on the security system aside from Wyatt. Apart from the staff, we’re the only people that even know this place exists.”

“Could one of them have done it?” Kaos asks, moving further into the room, his eyes locked on my bloodstained hand. “One of the doctors? Or maybe Meredith?”

“You think our sweet little housekeeper who yells at us every time she has to wash blood out of our clothing put a knife and a bullet in Camilla’s bed?” Bishop snaps.

The tension in the room is getting thicker with each second that ticks by, and my anxiety peaks.

“I don’t fucking know,” Kaos snaps. “I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

“Caleb,” I whisper.

“What did you say?” Crew turns his intense eyes on me, and I force myself not to cower under the mismatched stare.

I swallow around the lump in my throat. Everyone in this room is still processing the fact that someone they saw die is in fact very much alive, but I have to know. I have to point out the obvious explanation that none of them are going to think of. “Caleb. Did you ever remove him from the security system after he…died?”

Crew looks to Bishop, who shrugs and turns his attention to Kaos like he might have the answer, but it’s as I expected.

After all, why would they bother removing a dead man from their system?

Crew pulls his phone from his pocket and types out a message before turning his attention back to me, his eyes moving over where my hand is clutching my shoulder. “I want to get that looked at, but right now, I don’t trust anyone outside of the five of us.” He flexes his clenched jaw as he checks the response to whatever he just sent. “I’m going to take Camilla to Elias’s house. He’ll take care of your shoulder, and we’ll be safe there until we can figure out what our next step is going to be.”

Before I can think to argue, Bishop plucks me off the bed at the same time Kovu pulls a backpack from God knows where and starts piling clothes and toiletries into it.

Kaos pulls my laptop from its spot on the bedside table and rolls up the cord before handing both things to Kovu, while Crew types on his phone impatiently.

“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” I ask as Bishop carries me to the door. “And you know I can walk, right? I ran with a bullet wound last week, this is nothing compared to that.” I gesture to my bleeding shoulder.

“We need to make sure she has a go bag in one of the cars when it’s safe to come back here,” Bishop says to Crew who nods his agreement.

“A go bag?” I ask.

Kovu zips up the backpack, and they move together down the hallway, their eyes bouncing off every door we pass.

“Can someone answer me?” I snap.

Kaos runs a gentle hand down my back. “We all have one, Princess. It’s in case we ever have to get out of the city quickly. We each keep a bag in the back of my SUV, packed and ready.”

My mouth drops open, but I don’t get a chance to respond before I’m carefully lowered back into the car that still smells like sex, and my cheeks instantly heat, but no one else seems to notice. They’re all in work mode, and for some reason that makes my stomach erupt with butterflies. This is them keeping me safe.

They didn’t pause. They didn’t hesitate. As soon as there was a threat to me, they moved as one to get me somewhere safe so we could regroup, and that makes my heart clench.

It’s only a short drive, and before I know it, Kovu is pulling me out of the car and holding me against his chest as he climbs the steps of the pretty brownstone on a quiet street.

“You know I can walk, right?”

“Yep.”

“Kovu.”

“Little Lamb.” He smirks down at me, which just makes me roll my eyes. His eyes darken, and he drops his lips to rest against the shell of my ear. “Careful, Camilla, you know how much I love to see you bleed. My control is already holding on by a thread, and I’d prefer not to have to kill our friends for watching me fuck you.”

My mouth drops open as a deep blush covers my cheeks, just in time for the door to swing open. A smiling Leighton is standing in the doorway, her dark hair pulled up in a neat knot on the top of her head, and her dark eyes gleaming when they lock onto each of us.

“Come in, Elias has his medical kit open in the kitchen.” She waves us through and doesn’t seem intimidated in the least by the criminals that file past her.

Her brows tug together when she sees me bleeding in Kovu’s arms, her eyes flicking between us and then to my shoulder. “Twice in as many weeks?”

“It was a knife this time,” I tell her, and she half laughs at my attempt at a joke, but I think it’s more of a pity laugh than anything else.

Kovu carries me through the house, and I take it in as we move toward the kitchen. The whole house is warm, not just the temperature, but the vibe itself. The mix of wood and stone, paired with the warm tones of the furnishings, are a far cry from the cold mansion I grew up in.

Elias is sitting at the table, his dark eyes immediately moving to Leighton when she walks into the room, his shoulders visibly relaxing once she’s back in his line of sight.

There’s another man at the other end of the table, his eyes moving over the laptop screen in front of him. His blue eyes flick up to make sure Leighton is back in the room before returning to the screen. Are they in a relationship like ours? Unconventional to the outside world, but that feels so right for the people in it?

He runs a hand through his dirty blond hair and taps the keys a few times before he finally turns his attention to us.

“That’s Wyatt,” Leighton tells me. “When he’s not at the club, he normally has his head in his laptop doing some kind of work for these guys.”

“We really need to get a full-time IT guy on the payroll.” Bishop rubs his hand down his face.

“You really do,” Elias adds, looking up from the medical bag he has open on the dining table.

“I wonder if we could persuade the Saint James family to give us one of theirs,” Crew muses, and I raise a brow at him. Does he mean Saint James as in the Chicago Mafia family? Do they know each other? And if they do, how?

“It’s a long story,” Kaos tells me as Kovu sets me down on the chair opposite Elias. “Did you get anything off the security tapes?”

Wyatt shakes his head. “No, they’ve been wiped. But what I can tell you is that it was Caleb who accessed the compound.”

“You can’t know that if the tapes have been wiped,” Kaos snaps.

Wyatt looks up at him, his brows raised, before his eyes flicker to Crew and back again. “Unless someone else has his fingerprints, I can assure you it was your father who broke into the compound and left the gift for Camilla.”