9. Chapter Nine #4
But suddenly, something inside him shifts. That raw fury twists into something even darker, deeper: ownership. Possession. The stark, consuming need to claim every jagged piece of my soul.
“I won’t,” he whispers harshly, gripping my chin, forcing my shattered gaze to his. “Because it matters, Camille. You matter, even if you’ve convinced yourself otherwise.”
A bitter laugh escapes me, sharp and wounded. “You don’t care,” I whisper brokenly, voice trembling. “All you care about is control…power.”
His thumb strokes my cheek, an agonizing tenderness that burns deeper than cruelty ever could.
“Maybe,” he murmurs, his voice raw, guttural.
“Maybe I am every fucked-up thing you think I am. But I saw you at Haven House, exposed, bleeding, raw, and I can’t unsee it.
I can’t forget it. I won’t let you pretend it didn’t happen. ”
My breath rattles painfully, chest aching, lungs contracting until each inhale feels like razors. Tears spill freely, silent streams tracing years of hidden agony down my cheeks. Kane tracks each one, relentless, dissecting my pain as if he’s starving for it.
“Why?” My voice is barely audible, fractured and trembling. “Why do you care?"
He leans in, so close that his breath scorches my cheek, his voice a broken whisper.
“Because you’re mine, Camille. Mine to see, mine to protect, mine to fucking tear apart if I have to.
And no one…” His voice hardens, sharp as shattered glass, deadly and merciless, “…no one touches what belongs to me.”
A sob rips through my chest, splintering every hidden wound wide open. I push against him again, palms trembling uselessly, but he only holds me tighter, refusing to let me collapse. Forcing every buried nightmare, every scar I’ve desperately hidden, to spill over and drown me.
Footsteps sound behind him, hurried, panicked, Preston calling my name, distant, frantic, oblivious.
But Kane doesn’t look away. Doesn’t even flinch.
He brushes my tears gently, voice steady, darkly certain.
“Tell me, “He says, voice a deadly whisper, eyes drilling into mine like bullets lodging in flesh. “Give me his name. Tell me Douglas Everhart is the one who broke you and I swear…I swear on my fucking soul, Camille, I’ll rip him apart.”
My chest cracks wide open, spilling every ugly truth I’ve kept locked behind my ribs for years.
“Yes,” I choke out, my voice shredded, barely human. “It was Douglas Everhart.”
The look Kane gives me is primal, savage, utterly unhinged.
“Good girl,” he breathes, pressing a kiss to my forehead that feels more like a brand, burning, possessive, and terrifyingly final. “Now go back inside. Smile. Lie if you have to.”
He pulls away just enough that his eyes blaze into mine, a promise wrapped in blood and vengeance. “And leave the rest to me.”
My hand shoots out before I can stop it, gripping his forearm like a lifeline as terror floods my veins. “Kane, don’t. Don’t do anything stupid. Please, just leave it alone.”
The words tear from my throat, shredded and desperate, costing me more pride, more strength, than I have left to give. My voice hangs between us, ragged and raw, fragile like shattered glass on concrete.
His arm goes rigid beneath my fingers, rage pulsing violently just beneath the surface. He stares down at my trembling hand, something lethal sparking behind his darkened eyes. Not sanity. Not reason. Something colder, crueler, an animal ready to tear apart the cage.
His voice slides out, quiet, like frost creeping across skin.
“Don’t ever ask me to leave this alone.”
“I am asking,” I whisper, fingers digging desperately into his jacket sleeve. “Not for him. Not for them. For me, Kane.”
Something twists in his face, agony, maybe, but it’s devoured by darkness instantly, crushed under the weight of his fury.
He steps closer, forcing me back against the cold stone wall. I'm caged by his body, his rage, his brutal determination.
“For you?” he repeats softly, his voice like barbed wire shredding and soothing at once.
“Camille, he threw you off a fucking boat and left you to die. Do you even grasp that? Do you remember how it felt? Because I do.” His voice plunges lower, sharper, merciless.
“I saw you at Haven House. I heard your voice break when you told that little girl your secret. I watched you relive it, trembling, trapped. I see the way you flinch every goddamn time someone brushes your back, still drowning after all these fucking years…”
“Stop,” I sob, voice cracking, eyes burning hot with shameful tears.
My fists curls into his jacket, holding him tighter, needing the contact as much as I hate it.
“You think I don’t know? You think I don’t carry it every day?
Every fucking breath is me remembering. You don’t get to storm in and rip me open like this. ”
His jaw clenches. His breath rushes out harshly, fanning across my face as he presses impossibly closer, forehead touching mine in a twisted mockery of comfort.
“You think this is me hurting you?” he hisses, eyes blazing with raw, violent protectiveness. “Watching that bastard smile, shake hands, laugh in your fucking face while you swallow your trauma like poison, smiling like a pretty, perfect little doll?”
I flinch.
And he sees it. He always sees it.
“Kane…” I choke on his name, voice splintering into fragments I’ll never piece back together.
His hand slides up my throat, fingers locking gently yet mercilessly around the nape of my neck, grounding me even as he breaks me apart.
“You can hate me,” he whispers harshly, his voice rough with barely restrained pain.
“You can scream and curse and fight until your voice gives out. But this?” He pulls me even closer, voice shaking with brutal honesty.
“This is mine. This isn’t a line, Camille, it’s a fucking grave. And I will bury anyone who crosses it.”
“He has power,” I whisper desperately, terror bleeding into every word. “Protection. Influence.”
His eyes flare with something feral, brutal. “So do I.”
His stare is merciless, stripping away every safe, comforting lie I’ve ever hidden behind.
I can feel it, I understand with devastating clarity: this isn’t hollow anger or arrogant posturing.
This is a man who’s already walked through hell, who has spilled blood and hasn’t blinked.
Who will spill more, if it means revenge.
“You’re not God,” I whisper, voice fracturing beneath new tears, softer, broken. “You can’t fix this.”
“I don’t want to fix it,” he rasps fiercely, eyes burning black with barely restrained violence. “I want to rip his fucking world apart. Slowly. I want him living every day with my shadow hovering over him. I want him afraid. I want every breath he takes to feel like borrowed fucking time.”
I shake my head weakly, but his grip tightens, unyielding, possessive, furious.
“He doesn’t get peace,” Kane growls, voice breaking dangerously low, each word carved from stone and vengeance. “Not when you’re carrying his scars inside you, silently bleeding every fucking day.”
My eyelids flutter closed.
There is some twisted part of me aches for exactly that. Craves Kane’s ruthless brand of justice. Wants him to hunt Douglas down, to punish him, hurt him until he’s reduced to ashes and dust.
But the other part, the small, trembling, damaged part, just wants it all to disappear, like a nightmare melting away at dawn.
“I’m not ready,” I whisper finally, voice so fragile I barely recognize it.
I feel Kane’s breath hitch, angry and anguished, his rage straining against the thin thread of control he’s barely managing.
“Please, Kane. If you meant anything you’ve ever said…
if you’ve ever cared about me at all... just wait. ”
The silence that follows is crushing, pressing down until my ribs ache beneath the unbearable weight of his fury, my pleading, and the bleeding truths we’ve laid bare between us.
After a long, torturous moment, he exhales once, harsh, resentful, bitter.
“Fine,” he says roughly.
It sounds like surrender.
It feels like war.
“Not forever,” he clarifies, the words gritted out like broken glass. “But for now.”
My hand curls desperately around his sleeve, holding on tight, terrified to trust this violent, unpredictable promise. “Swear to me.”
He pulls back just enough to look down at me, eyes colder than I’ve ever seen them, every shred of tenderness obliterated by a ruthless, jagged clarity.
His jaw tightens, muscles flexing beneath the skin like cables drawn too tight. He stares down at me, eyes fierce, every inch of him radiating a threat I know he’s aching to fulfill.
“I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.” he says quietly, each word crisp and measured, like bullets chambered and waiting.
His gaze searches my face, ruthless and uncompromising, dissecting my weakness as his thumb brushes my trembling fingers off his sleeve. He doesn’t move farther away, doesn’t soften his voice. He just holds me captive, drowning me slowly in his unwavering, dark certainty.
“But I’ll give you this much,” he continues softly, dangerously. “He’ll keep breathing, Camille. For now.”
Something painful twists in my chest, half-relief, half-dread, knowing the unspoken threat that hangs in the heavy air between us. My breath, shaky and ragged, betraying everything I’m desperately trying to hide.
Kane leans in, the barest distance between our mouths, his voice nothing more than a raw, blistering whisper. “But make no mistake, Princesa. He’s living on borrowed time. And when that time runs out, I won’t stop.”
My pulse skitters, heart tripping recklessly, caught between terror and twisted gratitude. He pulls back, eyes searing into mine like a brand, marking me, claiming me, reminding me that his restraint is temporary, fleeting, fragile.
“I won’t swear, Camille,” he murmurs finally, his voice hard, decisive, deadly calm. “Because mercy isn’t in my blood…not for this.”
Then he’s gone, leaving me alone, gasping, hollowed out by the raw knowledge that every second ticking forward is borrowed, temporary.
My knees buckle as I sag against the wall, desperate breaths tearing from my chest, each one an admission…
a truth I can’t voice, a craving I shouldn’t feel.
He’s etched vengeance into my bones, burned retribution into my skin, forcing me to crave justice delivered by his ruthless hands.
And now I’m terrified of the moment he finally unleashes it.