9. Chapter Nine #3
My mother’s clapping so hard her bracelets jangle up her forearm.
“My darling,” she breathes dramatically, dabbing at the corners of her eyes, and I want to slap her.
She’s never cried for me. Not when I needed it.
Not when I was violated. But now? Now she weeps because I look good on Preston’s arm and the cameras are pointed our way.
Charles is beaming. “This will be excellent for optics,” he says to Preston’s father, who agrees, clasping his shoulder like they’ve just secured a merger. “The Sinclairs and Caldwells, one hell of a power move.”
Clara’s glowing beside me, her hand clasped around Nathan’s. “I knew he was going to propose,” she whispers, her smile wide, her eyes shining with that too-pure hope I lost a long time ago. “You deserve everything, Cam.”
The lie lodges in my throat.
Preston’s grip tightens as he leads me toward yet another group. His smile’s too polished, too gleaming, and he doesn’t seem to notice how quiet I’ve gone. Or maybe he does, and he just doesn’t care.
And then the energy shifts.
I feel it before I turn.
A static prickle on my skin.
My lungs tighten.
He’s here.
Kane’s voice slides in like velvet-dipped poison. “Congratulations,” he says, smooth and sharp, standing with Ivy just behind him.
Preston brightens. “Kane. Ivy. Thank you…means a lot.”
Kane’s eyes never leave mine. Not once. Not when Ivy offers me a cheek-kiss, not when Preston turns to shake his hand. He watches me as though he’s standing on the edge, calmly fascinated, watching my entire world splinter apart beneath his feet.
“Camille,” he murmurs, voice hushed but charged, dangerous like ice hidden beneath fresh snow.
His gaze skewers me, methodical, relentless, unraveling every thread of my carefully woven lies.
He extends his hand, bold and arrogant, waiting for me to refuse, knowing damn well I can’t.
Preston watches intently, Clara’s breath hitches audibly, the room tightens like a noose pulled gently taut.
I set my hand in his, fingers shaking subtly, betraying everything I’ve tried to hide.
His grip closes around mine, possessive, unforgiving, iron wrapped in deceptively gentle heat.
He raises my hand slowly, deliberately, pressing his lips to my knuckles, a kiss that feels like the edge of a flame, deceptively sweet until it sears your skin.
“Congratulations,” he whispers again, each syllable a frostbite kiss against overheated flesh.
His thumb strokes languidly along the tender skin of my wrist, tracing hidden paths of torture, a caress that bruises invisibly, slowly dismantling every wall I’ve painstakingly built. “Such a pretty prize.”
My pulse pounds against my throat, wild and raw. His words burrow deeper than I let anyone else see, scraping painfully over wounds I’ve pretended don’t exist.
“I’m happy,” I breathe, the words brittle and delicate as fractured glass.
His smile is slow, ruthless, sharpened on cruelty and honed for destruction.
“Are you?” His voice slithers under my skin, dark and dangerous, a whisper made for shadows. “Keep telling yourself that lie, Camille. Maybe one day, you’ll actually believe it.”
“I do.” We both hear it for the lie it is.
Preston steps in swiftly, oblivious and purposeful, threading his hand through mine like a chain locking into place. He pulls me close, protective yet suffocating, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his hold.
I let him.
Because it’s easier.
Because it’s expected.
But Kane doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. His stare burns through me as I’m led away, eyes dark and locked on mine with that unbearable intensity that’s always seen too much.
Hyper-focused.
Always.
Like he’s cataloging my damage, like every fractured breath is just another reason to drag me back under.
My fingers clutch Preston’s hand, nails digging in hard. “We should move on.”
But before I can drag him away, my eyes snag, violently, unwillingly, on a face I never expected to see again.
Douglas Everhart.
His laugh hits me like a fist to the chest, heavy and bitterly familiar.
The kind of laugh that buries itself in nightmares, the kind I haven’t heard in fifteen years but could still recognize blindfolded.
He looks the same, same glittering arrogance, same contemptible pinky ring winking like mockery beneath the lights.
My throat constricts.
The room plunges into sudden silence, a vacuum where only my panic echoes.
I’m underwater again, black waves closing over my head, lungs screaming for air. I feel his palms, rough against my spine, pressing down, the yacht’s deck slick and cold beneath my fingertips. I hear the splash. Feel the bitter, choking taste of saltwater flooding my mouth.
My knees buckle slightly, betraying me.
He’s here.
Standing there, calm, smug, shaking hands, smiling like his hands aren’t stained with every ounce of innocence he ripped from my bones.
I stagger backward, breath stolen from me, colliding into Ivy.
Preston’s grip tightens painfully around my arm. “Camille?”
I can’t speak.
I can’t breathe.
The walls press closer, crushing my ribs, and Douglas’s face fills every inch of my vision, twisted and wrong and utterly oblivious to the carnage he’s left inside me.
“Camille?” Preston’s voice sharpens now, anxiety lacing through confusion. “What’s going on?”
My head jerks from side to side, mouth opening and closing uselessly. The words won’t come, they’re stuck deep in the place where screams live.
Then, Kane moves, stepping closer.
He says nothing. Doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t offer comfort.
But his presence crowds me anyway, heavy and invasive, oppressive heat bearing down, stripping away the last fragile shred of control.
He watches Douglas. Watches me. Eyes narrowing, calculating the distance between my panic and the monster who caused it. I can see it in the way his gaze sharpens, the way his jaw clenches in sudden, cold comprehension.
He knows.
God, he knows.
Without thinking, without breathing, I wrench my arm free from Preston and run, ignoring my mother’s outraged gasp, Clara’s stunned whisper, Charles’s angry shout. I shove blindly through faceless bodies.
I burst onto the terrace, air slicing into my lungs, cold and punishing.
My palms slam into the marble balustrade, lungs seizing, chest heaving, heartbeat thunderous.
Douglas Everhart’s smile claws at my mind, his laughter a razor slicing deeper with every memory dredged from where I buried them.
He’s the ghost of the girl I could’ve been, the silent, drowning child lost to deep waters and darker secrets.
Footsteps approach, slow, deliberate, relentless.
Not Preston. Not my sister’s gentle worry. Not even my mother’s brittle impatience.
Kane.
I shut my eyes tightly, bile burning the back of my throat, nausea twisting my gut into knots. Shame floods through me, hot and acidic, stripping my soul raw. I feel his stare, heavy and merciless, carving me open until every hidden wound bleeds openly.
“Leave me alone, Kane,” I whisper, voice splintered and shaking. I squeeze my eyes tighter, as if darkness could erase the knowledge burning behind his eyes. “Please.”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak right away, just lets the silence grow sharper, crueler, digging deeper until I tremble openly beneath its weight.
Then, finally, so softly I almost miss it, he breathes my name. “Camille.”
The way he says it hurts worse than any wound.
“I know,” he adds quietly, voice steady, pitiless, final.
My eyes snap open, locking onto his. “You don’t know anything.”
But his expression is granite-hard, unflinching, eyes dark with something dangerous beneath that carefully maintained composure.
He steps closer, cornering me, pressing me against the unforgiving stone. His voice lowers to a lethal whisper. “I heard you at Haven House. Every word you gave to that little girl.”
My lungs stop.
The world splinters apart beneath my feet.
“No,” I whisper, desperate denial clawing at my throat. “You didn’t…”
“I did.” His voice slices through me, unforgiving, each word a ruthless strike.
“I stood there and listened as you poured your soul out to a stranger, because every single person who was supposed to protect you was too blind or too fucking selfish to care.” His voice dips lower, darker.
“How long did you really think you could bury it?”
My eyes burn, shame and pain mingling like acid behind my eyelids. “Stop,” I choke, pushing weakly against his chest, but he doesn’t move. He steps closer instead, crowding me until the cold wall bites hard into my spine and the air thickens with unbearable tension.
“He hurt you.” His words land like blows, brutal and precise. “Douglas Everhart touched you, violated you, and threw you aside like garbage.”
A harsh, broken sob bursts from my throat, uncontainable and ugly, ripping open every fragile seam I’ve painstakingly stitched together. My knees buckle beneath me, strength dissolving instantly. But Kane’s grip is iron, fingers bruising on my upper arms.
“Don’t,” I beg, voice splintering into pieces. “Don’t say it. Please, Kane…”
But mercy is foreign to him. His eyes blaze, cutting straight through every trembling facade I cling to. “He threw you into the ocean. Left you sinking in the dark. Cold. Helpless. Alone.”
I shake my head violently, desperate to erase the images flashing brutally across my mind. “Please stop…”
“And your family let it happen,” he growls, his voice savage now, eyes blackening with rage.
“Your parents, their fucking legacy, their image, their perfect goddamned lies, they buried it. Left you broken and terrified and never looked back. All those years, Camille, and no one ever said a goddamn word.”
I’m shaking uncontrollably, tears sliding hot and unstoppable down my face. “Stop,” I plead, utterly shattered, utterly helpless. “God…Just stop…”