10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
K ane
She begged me.
Pleaded.
Her tears, her voice raw and broken and desperate.
She wants peace, quiet, restraint. She thinks mercy is letting a monster breathe.
But I’m not merciful.
Not tonight. Not ever.
My blood’s ice in my veins, heartbeat a metronome counting down to violence. Every muscle in my body is locked in ruthless calm. I feel no rage, just a slow, lethal clarity sharpening my focus like a blade ready to slice open skin.
Douglas Everhart.
That bastard’s smug, bloated fucking face haunts me. His laughter, his tailored suits, the arrogance of a man who’s spent decades thinking he’s untouchable. Above justice. Above consequences.
But he’s never dealt with me.
Not yet.
Not until tonight.
I’ve taken men apart before, slowly, brutally, meticulously. Reduced powerful men to husks, stripped them of pride, wealth, sanity. But this? This isn’t business. This isn’t negotiation or strategy or calculated collateral damage.
This is personal.
This is mine.
I move swiftly down the hall, pulling out phone, mind already flicking through options, how I’ll break him, dismantle every inch of security he thinks protects him.
Joaquin answers on the first ring, his voice instantly alert.
“Douglas Everhart,” I say flatly, voice colder than ice. “I want him stripped bare. Assets, debts, affairs, addictions, every filthy secret. Every single thing he thought he buried. I want it delivered in less than twenty-four hours.”
Joaquin pauses briefly, he knows this tone. He’s heard it before. He knows better than to question it.
“Consider it done,” he says finally.
“And Joaquin?” My voice is low, precise. “I want constant surveillance. Constant. I want cameras in his home, in his car, in his fucking bedroom. I want access to his emails, his texts, his bank accounts, everything.”
He exhales; his tension audible even through the phone. “You got it.”
I hang up, breathing slow, steady, deliberate.
My reflection stares back at me from the black glass, calm, composed, monstrous. My heartbeat doesn’t quicken. It slows, steady, methodical, ruthless.
This isn’t revenge. This is surgery. Precise incisions through arteries he doesn’t yet know are exposed. He’ll bleed slowly, painfully, intimately.
And then, when he’s begging, when his whole world collapses around him and he finally understands what fear truly tastes like…
Then, I’ll end him.
Camille thinks she wants mercy.
But mercy died when he laid hands on her.
And now I’ll make sure he dies begging for it.
***
I don’t go back inside.
Not yet.
Let them smile and pose for pictures. Let Preston tighten his grip on Camille, believing she’s his to parade around, ignorant to the storm about to shatter every carefully constructed wall they’ve built.
My violence doesn’t need noise or spectacle. It thrives best in silence.
I step deeper into the shadows beyond the reach of valet lights, cold night air slicing into my lungs as I dial a secure line, the one I keep only for blood-soaked secrets and debts repaid in screams.
A voice answers on the second ring, deep, familiar. No names, no preamble. Just business. “Listening.”
“Douglas Everhart.” I pause, slow inhale. “Start with his finances. Freeze his accounts…quietly. Trigger an audit. Then leak something ugly. Embezzlement. Fraud. Doesn’t matter if it’s true. I want his wife nervous. His business partners wary. His friends unwilling to return his calls.”
“Timeline?”
“Immediate.”
“Intensity?”
“Ruin him,” I say calmly, voice devoid of any hesitation. “But do it slowly enough that he has time to feel it. Make it linger.”
“Understood.” The line disconnects sharply.
I light a cigarette, watching the smoke coil lazily upwards, just like the chaos about to consume Douglas Everhart. Camille begged me to wait, to leave it untouched, to spare her from reliving nightmares. But I’m not a man who waits. I’m not a man who listens.
Not even to her.
Especially not to her.
Behind me, the soft click of high heels echoes quietly off polished stone. Ivy steps into my peripheral vision, movements careful, controlled. She’s smart enough to approach slowly. Smart enough to know I’m already coiled tight.
“I wondered where you’d disappeared to,” she says softly, voice careful. “Camille seems… shaken.”
I don’t look at her, continuing to inhale smoke, slow and deliberate. “She’ll survive.”
“You’re destroying her.” There’s no accusation in Ivy’s tone, just cold observation. She moves closer, heels clicking softly, folding her arms over her chest. “But maybe that was the plan all along.”
“I’m not destroying her.” I finally glance toward her, exhaling smoke sharply. “I’m setting her free.”
Ivy laughs, humorless. “Is that what you call this? Freedom? You’re pulling her apart, Kane…piece by piece. Eventually, there’ll be nothing left.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Her eyes narrow slightly, but unflinching. She knows the violence I’m capable of. Knows exactly how dark I go. She’s watched me dismantle empires, topple powerful men, turn reputations to ash. She knows this won’t end clean.
“You’re fixated,” Ivy murmurs. “Obsessed. You might think you’re in control now, but she’s changing you. Weakening you. I can see it.”
I turn sharply, pinning her with a look so cold, so utterly merciless that she flinches, barely, but it’s enough. I move closer, voice dropping to something lethal, quiet enough that only she can hear it.
“Ivy, don’t confuse my obsession with weakness. Camille Sinclair belongs to me,her pain, her secrets, every fractured piece she tries to hide. Anyone who touches what’s mine, I destroy. Slowly, piece by piece.” My stare pins her in place, cold and unblinking. “That includes you.”
She swallows, throat working delicately as she recalculates the danger of standing this close, of testing boundaries. Her eyes narrow cautiously, wary yet still defiant enough to push forward. “If I didn’t know better, Kane, I’d think you were in love with her.”
I meet her stare head-on, feeling something primal twist in my chest, clawing its way deeper than mere love ever could.
Love is a simple, fleeting thing, easily lost, easily replaced.
This is different. This is something violent and bottomless, an unquenchable hunger, an unbreakable chain wrapped around my bones.
It sinks into bone marrow, infects the blood, reshapes the soul. It doesn’t heal; it consumes.
“Love?” I echo quietly, the word bitter and mocking on my tongue.
I step closer, my voice dropping to something low and dangerous, a truth too violent to be softened.
“This isn’t love, Ivy. It’s deeper. It’s a starvation no touch can ease, a thirst no blood can satisfy.
She’s embedded herself inside me, taken root where nothing else survives. ”
My eyes burn into hers, the words heavy with a certainty that leaves no room for doubt. “You think love is dangerous?” I murmur, leaning in until my breath grazes her cheek, cold and unforgiving. “This makes love look harmless. What I feel isn’t safe.”
“It’s not love, Ivy. It’s so much fucking worse.”
She holds still, her pulse fluttering visibly at the base of her throat, lips parted as if she wants to say something sharp, something defiant. Instead, her gaze slips, just for an instant, betraying a rare fracture beneath her careful mask.
“You’re dangerous enough without this fixation,” she murmurs finally, her voice a quiet blend of caution and faint longing, like someone staring into flames they ache to touch, knowing it would burn them.
“I don’t envy her…but a part of me wonders what it’s like to be on the receiving end of something so destructive, so consuming. ”
Her eyes flick back to mine, guarded now, but her voice dips lower, threaded with a wary honesty she rarely shows. “Just remember, Kane…fires that burn this bright rarely spare anyone. Not even the ones who starts them.”
Ivy retreats slowly, the echo of her heels fade away into silence, leaving the ghost of her words hanging between us, a warning and a prophecy rolled into one. I crush the cigarette beneath my shoe, pulse steady and ruthless.
I stand in the silence, watching the dying ember from the cigarette fade out at my feet, smothered like every warning Ivy left behind. Her words linger at the edges of my mind, circling slowly, whispering caution, but I don’t flinch. I don’t retreat.
I’m not afraid to burn.
Camille is already the inferno beneath my skin, scorching through every nerve ending, erasing every boundary I ever set between control and chaos. Ivy was right about one thing: fires like this spare no one.
But she’s wrong to think I’d ever run from the flames.
I tilt my head back, breathing in the heavy night air, eyes closed for a heartbeat, feeling the recklessness simmer, the hunger sharpen. The pain of wanting Camille has long since fused with the pleasure, creating something dangerously addictive.
Something worth the destruction.
After all, I’ve been ruling in hell long enough…I know exactly how to handle the flames.
***
Morning breaks in silence.
Muted sunlight slithers through tinted glass, spreading thinly over the city like blood seeping from a wound. My phone buzzes, a quiet, lethal vibration confirming Joaquin has delivered exactly what I demanded.
Douglas Everhart’s life, dissected, now splayed wide open.
Flipping open the laptop, my eyes skim through the file, absorbing each secret with cold precision. Affairs. Offshore accounts balanced on lies. Prescriptions hidden beneath his wife’s name. A private investigator he quietly pays to spy on his married daughter and her lover. Everything.
Every weakness, every fracture.
My gaze halts on a photograph, his eldest daughter smiling carelessly, her arm wrapped around a man who isn’t wearing her ring. Hotel receipts. Explicit messages. Dates, times, precise locations. Perfect.