17. Chapter Seventeen #2
His kiss is all tongue and teeth and hunger. His fingers thread into my hair, tugging me closer as his lips consume mine. I gasp against him, but he doesn’t relent. He kisses me like he’s about to die. Like I’m oxygen and he doesn’t know when he’ll get to breathe again.
And I feel it.
The desperation.
The apology.
The promise hidden inside his mouth.
When he finally pulls back, we’re both shaking. My lips are swollen, my breath ragged, my knees barely holding me up.
But he doesn’t let go.
He presses his forehead to mine, hands still cupping my jaw like I’m breakable, like I’m real, like I matter.
“I need you to listen to me,” he says, voice hoarse. “Don’t leave this house. Not with Javi. Not with Joaquin. Not even with Diego. I don’t give a fuck what anyone says.”
I nod.
His breath brushes my lips. “I don’t care what you hear. Don’t flinch. Don’t speak. Don’t fucking run.”
“I won’t,” I whisper.
“I’ll lock you in a room if I have to, Camille. I swear to God. I need you safe.”
Tears sting the backs of my eyes, but I hold them back. I force myself to meet his gaze and keep it steady.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
His mouth finds mine again. This time it’s slower. But somehow deeper. He kisses me like a man who’s already killed for me. And would do it again in a heartbeat.
When he finally steps back, his expression is already shifting.
Closing.
Sealing shut.
And when he turns toward the doors Diego disappeared behind, I see it for the first time in full:
Not just Kane Rivera, the man who wrecked me in a penthouse and put my soul back together midair.
But the ruthless, calculating force Miami calls jefe.
And I…I’m the woman who walked straight into his war.
Kane
My study breathes darkness. Quiet, lethal.
Dangerous. Shadows cling stubbornly to the corners, defiant even against the Miami sun lurking just beyond heavy curtains.
The scent of aged leather and cigar smoke coils thickly through the air, mingling sharply with the metallic bite of gun oil, familiar, soothing, like blood on my knuckles after a good fight.
Five men wait silently, spread like chess pieces around the massive mahogany table.
Diego stands near the towering bookshelf, hooded eyes unreadable, body coiled and lethal beneath deceptive stillness.
Joaquin paces by the window, restless and volatile like a predator starved for blood.
Elías lounges deceptively casual, flicking his blade in rhythmic impatience against his thigh, craving violence, itching to strike.
Javi stands rigid, fingertips pressing deep into the polished wood, shoulders locked in tension.
None speak when I enter. They know better. They’ve seen me ruthless, seen me cold. Seen the kind of quiet that precedes bloodshed.
My footsteps echo softly against marble, deliberate, controlled. My fingers trail along the carved back of my chair before I finally sit, sprawling deceptively loose, eyes sweeping the room slowly.
“Tell me,” I murmur quietly, voice smooth but lined with steel.
Javi hesitates just long enough for the tension in the room to sharpen into a razor’s edge. He slides an unmarked folder toward me, gaze carefully neutral.
I don’t touch it yet. I let silence hang, heavy and threatening.
With a breath that shakes just slightly, Javi flips it open, spreading photographs across the dark polished surface like tarot cards revealing a cursed fortune.
My gaze dips down. Slow. Methodical.
Something lethal twists inside my chest.
Camille stares back at me, oblivious, unprotected, utterly unaware of the danger circling her.
One photo captures her outside the Langford, curls tousled by the wind, eyes narrowed with instinctive unease.
Another image shows her rigid beside her mother at their sprawling estate, that carefully constructed polite mask she wears barely concealing discomfort.
Another still, lit by neon and shadows in a crowded nightclub, shows her smiling freely, beautifully reckless, fucking vulnerable.
There are dozens more, each shot intrusive, each invasion more intimate than the last.
Camille, exposed. Targeted. And I didn’t fucking know.
My pulse doesn’t quicken. My breath remains even. Instead, an icy, devastating clarity settles over me. A quiet fury rises, controlled, deadly. Twitching beneath my skin like a muscle trained for violence.
“When?” The question drips from my lips, colder than ice, quieter than death.
Javi swallows tightly, aware he’s stepping onto thin ice. “Timestamps date back weeks. Earliest ones started right after Mateo.”
Mateo.
Nineteen. Barely more than a fucking kid.
Innocent. His body carved, butchered, and left displayed by Torres, a message, bold and blood-soaked, delivered directly to me.
Torres and Ramos paid their debts in blood, bones, and screams that linger in nightmares even now.
Yet the tangled, poisonous legacy they left behind still tightens around my throat, like rusted wire twisting tighter with every breath.
My fingers trace the photographs again, deliberate.
Camille unaware, defenseless, fucking exposed.
Her guarded smiles, her soft laughter captured by the cold, invasive eye of a predator.
Fury coils inside me, threading deeper, darker, settling with lethal precision.
My knuckles throb, ached by the brutal restraint it takes not to shatter bone, rip flesh, destroy someone. Right fucking now.
Javi clears his throat, voice tight, clipped, trying to mask nerves he knows better than to show. “Whoever took these had deep access. Files were encrypted, buried deep inside Ramos’s old servers. Left there intentionally, like a time bomb, waiting.”
“They wanted us to know,” Diego growls, voice raw and weighted.
“No,” I counter softly, deadly calm threading every syllable. “They wanted me to know.”
I let my gaze lift slowly, pinning each man briefly before it lands hard on Joaquin. “The last photo?”
Joaquin’s jaw twitches, his gaze flicking to Javi, who nods grimly, permission granted.
Joaquin swallows, voice low and tense. “Haven House. Two nights ago. She was alone. Unaware. And the angle…” He pauses, carefully, like he’s stepping around tripwires.
“The photographer was close, jefe. Real fucking close.”
It hits like a blade in my chest, cold, sharp, precise.
Camille at Haven House, her sanctuary. The one fucking place she believes is safe, sacred, protected from monsters like me. Monsters like the ones hunting her now.
Vulnerable. Exposed. Threatened.
Slowly, deliberately, I gather each photo, hiding her laughter, her fragile moments, beneath my palm, slipping them back into the folder one by one, a ritual of control over chaos.
Then I stand. My chair scrapes, the sound cutting like steel. Every man stiffens instantly, straightening like soldiers bracing for war.
“If someone’s bold enough to trail Camille, photograph her, and leave a fucking calling card…” My voice dips, icy quiet, dripping venom, “…they think they’ve found leverage. They think they’ve found my weakness.”
The silence thickens, heavy, charged.
I lean forward, palms pressed flat against polished wood, muscles coiled with carefully measured violence. “But Camille isn’t my weakness. She’s their fucking death sentence.”
I straighten again, rage distilled into ruthless clarity.
“Double every perimeter. Guards at every entrance, cameras in every shadow. No one steps onto this property without my say. Joaquin, send a team, discreetly to watch Sinclair’s estate.
Diego, find out who’s still breathing from Ramos’s old crew who had access to intel like this.
Javi, rip apart every byte of their digital footprint, photographs, IPs, whispers. I want names by sundown.”
“Si, jefe.” Voices echo sharply. Clear. Ready.
I lift the folder, Camille’s vulnerability captured in paper-thin snapshots. My voice drops dangerously low, each word edged like a freshly sharpened blade. “And no one breathes a fucking word of this to her. Not yet.”
I let the threat linger, a promise of pain twisting silently in the air.
“Whoever’s behind this will learn exactly how slowly a man can beg for death.”
They nod grimly. They’ve seen me ruthless. Seen me merciless.
But this?
They’ve never seen me kill for love.
They fucking will now.
The men leave swiftly, leaving silence heavy enough to choke on. Only when the door clicks shut behind them do I let out one raw, tightly controlled breath.
Slowly, deliberately, I open the folder again, my fingers brushing Camille’s photograph. Her bright, easy laugh frozen in time, caught unaware, glowing softly like moonlight on water. Innocent. Carefree.
And hunted.
My fist curls, knuckles white with restraint.
Whoever did this thinks they’ve discovered a weapon to wield against me.
But Camille isn’t a fucking weakness.
She’s my reason for war.
And I never lose wars, not the ones that matter. Not the kind that involve her.
I stare at the photo again, memorizing every line of her face, the curve of her smile, the reckless abandon she rarely allows herself. She’s carefree. Unaware. Perfectly unguarded.
Someone watched her.
Tracked her.
Followed her right into her sanctuary, violating the one goddamn place she believed she could heal.
And then left it, waiting for me to find.
A challenge. A dare. A death wish.
My pulse throbs, controlled, slow, calculated, pure, cold rage winding itself through every cell. Because violence is who I am. Bloodshed is where I thrive. And vengeance? It’s what I breathe.
This isn’t business. This isn’t a game.
This is personal.
My phone buzzes quietly. Ignored.
Outside the study, life hums quietly, armed men taking their positions, vigilant footsteps echoing softly through halls, Camille somewhere above, blissfully unaware of the storm gathering beneath her.
Someone is determined to drag her into darkness.
My darkness.