15. Cami
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Cami
Sal made a terrible patient.
Three days out from the crash and he was already trying to claw his way back to work, wincing every time he breathed too deep, snapping at the doctor who kept telling him cracked ribs needed time.
Two weeks minimum of rest, she’d said. No fighting.
No stress. No running around playing mafia boss while his body knit itself back together.
He’d nodded along to all of it and ignored every word.
So I’d appointed myself his keeper.
“Hold still.” I perched on the edge of the bed with the antiseptic and a fresh roll of gauze, peeling back the old dressing on the cut along his ribs. “If you reopen this, I am telling the doctor exactly how it happened.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It’s eleven stitches.” I dabbed at it, gentle as I could, and he hissed through his teeth. “Baby.”
“I have been shot, Camellia. Stabbed. Thrown through a window. I do not flinch at scratches.”
“And yet.” I pressed the new gauze down, smoothing the tape over his skin, trying not to notice the warmth of him under my hands or the way his eyes had gone soft watching me. Trying and failing. “There. Done. Was that so hard?”
“Excruciating,” he said gravely. “I may not survive. I think I need soup.”
I rolled my eyes. “You had soup an hour ago.”
“The trauma has returned. I’m very weak.” He let his head loll back against the pillows, the picture of theatrical suffering, one hand pressed to his bandaged chest. “I can barely lift my arms. You’ll have to feed me. It’s the only humane option.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“I’m wounded. In your service, I might add. The least you could do is spoon broth into my mouth while I recover.”
I should have told him to feed himself. Instead I reached for the bowl on the nightstand, scooped up a spoonful, and held it to his lips while he watched me with those gray eyes gone warm and wicked all at once.
“This is humiliating for both of us,” I informed him.
“Speak for yourself.” He took the spoonful, swallowed, and somehow made even that look smug. “I’m having the time of my life.”
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. Then another. He caught my wrist before I could pull the spoon away, pressed a kiss to the inside of it, his lips warm against my pulse, and the broth was forgotten.
“You’re getting soup on the sheets,” I whispered.
“Don’t care.”
He pulled me down. I went, careful of his ribs, settling against the unbandaged side of him, and he kissed me slow and sweet, one hand cradling the back of my head like I was something precious. It wasn’t heat this time. It was something quieter. Something that scared me more than heat ever could.
We stayed like that a long time. Me tucked into his side, his fingers tracing idle patterns on my arm, both of us pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist. He told me a stupid story about Hendry getting so deep into a romance novel on a stakeout that he missed the target leaving the building.
I laughed until my stomach hurt. He smiled at me like I’d hung the moon.
This, I thought. I could get used to this.
Then I remembered.
“The proof.” I sat up. “Vera put it all together. I’m supposed to send it tonight, before Logan has the chance to bury anything.”
“Mm.” His eyes were already half closed, the painkillers finally winning. “Use my laptop. It’s on the dresser. Password’s your name.” A sleepy huff of breath. “Don’t tell my men. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Warmth I didn’t want spread through my chest.
I kissed his forehead. Found the laptop on the dresser, carried it to the chair by the window so the light wouldn’t wake him, and opened it.
The password was my name.
I sat down. Plugged in Vera’s drive. Attached the files to a fresh message, the address already there, a short note with no name on it. Let my finger hover over send.
This was it. The moment I’d been building toward since I woke up on that warehouse floor. The revenge I’d traded my old life for. The destruction of the man who had humiliated me, betrayed me, nearly gotten me killed.
I pressed send.
For one breath, there was nothing but pure triumph. I watched the progress bar fill. Watched the confirmation appear. Sent. Done. Irreversible. In a few days, maybe a week, Logan Caldwell’s world was going to implode.
Then I remembered the document.
Vera had mentioned it before the crash. One last piece she needed, something about the original timeline of the debts. She’d asked me to look for it in Sal’s files.
I started searching through the folders on his laptop. Financial records. Business correspondence. Meeting notes. Everything organized with the meticulous precision I’d come to expect from him.
I found a folder labeled “Caldwell.”
That made sense. It would have all the debt documentation. I clicked it open.
And froze.
Photos.
The same photos from the email. Logan and Rosalie in hotel rooms. In my kitchen. In my bed. Screenshots of their text messages. Hotel receipts. Everything I’d seen on my phone that day in the church.
But there was more.
Dated notes. A timeline. Documentation that went back months before the wedding.
My hands started shaking.
I clicked on the earliest file. Read the notes Sal had written.
Caldwell affair confirmed. Sister of fiancée. Duration: 18+ months. Leverage potential: significant. Recommend maintaining surveillance until optimal moment for disclosure.
Optimal moment.
I kept reading.
Wedding date confirmed: June 15th. Suggest timing email disclosure for morning of ceremony. Maximum chaos = maximum leverage. Caldwell reputation destroyed. Debt collection position strengthened.
My chest was tight. I couldn’t breathe.
He knew.
He’d known about the affair long before the wedding. He’d watched. He’d waited. He’d planned.
And he’d sent me that email.
Not to save me. Not to warn me. To ruin Logan.
I was a line item. Another tool in his arsenal. Another piece of leverage to be exploited.
I opened my email accounts. Searched for the original message, the one that had arrived on my wedding day. Traced it back through the headers, following the digital breadcrumbs.
The same account. The same sender.
It had been him all along.
The world went very quiet.
I sat there, staring at the screen, feeling everything I’d built over the past weeks crumble around me. The trust. The intimacy. The moments in the dark where I’d let myself believe this was real.
Maximum chaos. Maximum leverage. Optimal moment.
He’d chosen the moment specifically to destroy me along with Logan. Had calculated exactly when the revelation would hurt the most. Had watched me walk down that aisle knowing what was waiting for me.
Had planned for my humiliation.
“Camellia.”
I didn’t turn around.
His footsteps were uneven. Limping. He shouldn’t be out of bed, shouldn’t be walking around with cracked ribs, but of course he was. Stubborn, infuriating man.
The man who had ruined my life on purpose.
“You sent it.” My voice came out flat. Empty. “The email. On my wedding day. You sent it.”
Silence.
“You knew about the affair for months. You watched them. You documented everything. And you waited until I was walking down the aisle to tell me.”
I turned then. Looked at him.
He was standing in the doorway, barefoot, wearing only sweatpants, his torso still wrapped in bandages. His face was pale.
And God help me, even now, even gutted, with the proof of what he’d done still glowing on the screen behind me, my body took one traitorous step toward him before my brain caught up and nailed my feet to the floor.
I hated that. Hated that some animal part of me still wanted to cross the room and put my hands on his chest instead of throwing something at his head.
I made myself stand still.
“You timed it for maximum impact.” I could hear my own voice like it was coming from somewhere far away. “For the worst possible moment. For me.”
“Camellia...” He stepped toward me.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” I laughed, and it sounded broken even to my own ears. “Did you think you could just... what? Keep it secret forever? Let me fall for you without ever knowing that you’re the reason I fell apart in the first place?”
“I didn’t know you then.” His voice was rough. Urgent. “I was tracking Logan. His debts, his vulnerabilities. The affair was just another piece of leverage. I didn’t...”
“You didn’t think about me at all.” I finished for him. “I was just collateral damage. A way to increase the chaos. A tool.”
“Yes.” The word came out like it cost him something. “Yes. That’s what you were. Before.”
“Before?”
“Before I met you.” He took another step closer. “Before I watched you stand in front of everyone who betrayed you and refuse to break. Before I saw you fight back instead of crumble. Before I...”
“Before you what?”
“Before I fell in love with you.”
The words just sat there between us.
I stared at him. At this man who had calculated my destruction and then held me while I cried about it. Who had sent me into the worst moment of my life and then made me tea when I couldn’t sleep. Who had planned my humiliation and then defended me against everyone who tried to humiliate me again.
“You love me.” The words tasted strange in my mouth.
“Yes.”
“You sent that email expecting chaos and you got me instead.”
“Yes.” His jaw was tight. His hands were clenched at his sides.
“I did not expect you. I did not expect to watch you burn your whole life down and come out stronger. I did not expect to want you so badly it keeps me awake at night. I did not expect to...” He stopped.
Swallowed. “I would burn those plans. All of them. I would burn my own empire if it meant you never looked at me the way you’re looking at me now. ”
“Easy to say.”
“Easy to mean.”
He stepped closer. Close enough that I could see the raw honesty in his eyes. The vulnerability he never showed anyone else. The fear.
“I know what I did was unforgivable. I know I have no right to ask you for anything. But I’m asking anyway.
” His voice cracked. “I love you, Camellia. I have loved you since you looked at me in that warehouse and told me I wasn’t even in your top three worst things that had happened to you that day. ”
My heart was pounding. My eyes were burning.
Because here was the thing.
I thought I loved him too.
As insane as it sounded. As fucked up as the situation was. Despite everything he’d done, despite the betrayal, despite the fact that he’d orchestrated the worst day of my life...
I loved him.
But love wasn’t enough. Not right now. Not when the wound was still fresh and bleeding.
“I need time.” The words were barely above a whisper. “And I need... space. Real space. Not this. Not lying next to you every night pretending I can sleep.”
“Whatever you need.” He stepped back. Gave it to me, even though I could see what it cost him. “Take the blue room at the end of the east hall. It locks from the inside. No one comes through that wing without my word, and that includes me. You have it.”
“Sal...”
“I’m not going to chase you, Camellia. I want to. God, I want to. But I took enough of your choices away from you to last us both a lifetime.” His jaw worked. “This one is yours. All of it.”
I stood up. Walked past him without looking at him, because looking at him would have undone me.
I made it to the hallway before the tears started falling.
The blue room was cold and beautiful and empty.
I locked the door, the way he’d said I could.
I climbed into a bed that didn’t smell like cedar and sandalwood, that didn’t have him in it, and I lay awake in the dark and missed him until the missing turned physical, a dull sick ache lodged under my ribs.
I’d asked for distance.
I just hadn’t known it would feel like this.