17. Cami
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Cami
I woke to cold.
Concrete beneath my cheek. Damp air filling my lungs. The smell of mold and rust and something chemical I couldn’t name.
Not again.
The thought surfaced through the fog in my brain. Not again. Not another warehouse, another kidnapping, another moment of waking up in a strange place with no idea how I got there.
But this wasn’t Sal’s warehouse. This was different. Older. Abandoned. The walls were crumbling, graffiti covering what was left of the paint, broken windows letting in slivers of gray light.
I tried to move and found my hands bound behind my back. Rope, rough and tight, biting into my wrists. My ankles were tied too, my body curled on the dirty floor like discarded trash.
Footsteps echoed somewhere nearby.
I lifted my head.
And saw Logan Caldwell standing over me.
He looked terrible. Worse than he had at the fundraiser. His suit was wrinkled, his hair unwashed, his eyes wild with a desperation I’d never seen in him before. He was pacing, back and forth, back and forth, muttering under his breath, a man coming apart at the seams.
“You’re awake.” He stopped pacing. Stared down at me. “Good. Good. We need to talk.”
“Logan.” My voice came out hoarse. Dry. How long had I been unconscious? “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” He laughed. It was not a sane sound. “What am I doing? What the fuck have you done, Cami? Do you have any idea?”
He started pacing again. Faster now. More frantic.
“The leaks. The press. It’s everywhere. My company is finished. Bankrupt. Done. And now they’re coming for my mother. Human trafficking, that’s what they’re going to charge her with, did you know that? They’re saying she handed you over as payment.”
“It was human trafficking.”
He spun toward me. His face was twisted with rage.
“She was trying to save me! She was trying to fix the mess I made, and now they’re coming for her too, and my company is gone, and everything I built is fucking ashes, and you...” He crouched down, grabbed my chin, forced me to look at him. “You walk around on his arm like you won.”
I met his eyes. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
“I did win.”
The slap came fast and hard. My head wrenched around with it. Pain exploded across my cheek. I tasted blood, copper and salt, flooding my mouth.
“You ruined me.” His voice was shaking. “You ruined everything. And now you’re going to help me fix it.”
I spat blood onto the concrete. Looked back at him.
“How exactly am I supposed to do that?”
Logan stood up, resumed his pacing. “He’s going to pay ten million for you. That’s enough to get my mother the best lawyers in the country and still disappear. Start over somewhere. Get away from all of this.”
“He won’t pay.”
“He will.” Logan’s laugh was bitter. Broken. “I’ve seen how he looks at you, Cami. Like you hung the fucking moon. Like you’re the only thing in the world that matters. He’ll pay anything to get you back.”
I stared at him. At this man I’d spent four years loving. Four years building a life with. Four years believing in.
“You never looked at me like that.”
The words came out quiet. Not accusatory. Just... factual.
Logan stopped pacing. His face crumpled for half a second. Guilt, maybe. Or just exhaustion.
“No.” He crouched down again, his voice lower now. Almost honest. “I didn’t. I tried, Cami. I really tried. But you were always so... competent. So put together. So fucking perfect all the time. It was exhausting.”
I understood then. With a clarity that cut through all the pain and anger and betrayal.
“You wanted someone who needed you.” I kept my voice steady. “Someone who made you feel powerful. And I was never going to be that person.”
“Rosalie did that.” He shrugged, confirming everything. “She looked at me like I was her hero. Like she couldn’t survive without me. You looked at me like you were just waiting for me to catch up.”
The truth of it settled over me, heavy and final.
He’d never loved me. Not really. He’d loved the idea of me, the competent fiancée who made his life run smoothly, but not me. Never me. I’d been too strong. Too capable. Too independent. And instead of rising to meet me, he’d found someone who would shrink herself to make him feel big.
“You’re a coward.” The words came out steady. Calm. “You hid behind your mother your whole life. Let her clean up your messes. Let her negotiate with your creditors while you gambled away your inheritance. You’re not a man, Logan. You’re a child playing dress-up.”
His face went red. “Shut up.”
“And Sal is going to come for you.” I smiled, tasting blood. “He’s going to find me, and when he does, he’s going to make you wish you’d never been born.”
Logan laughed. A sharp, brittle sound.
“We’ll see about that.”
He stood up. Walked toward the door. Paused with his hand on the frame.
“You know what the worst part is?” He didn’t turn around. “He looks at you the way I always wished I could. Like you’re worth something. Like you matter.” A pause. “I never understood what that felt like until I saw it on someone else’s face.”
Then he was gone.
I don’t know how long I spent in that building.
Hours. Maybe longer. Time became meaningless, just an endless stretch of cold and pain and growing desperation.
My stomach cramped with hunger, gnawing at itself, empty and aching.
I needed water. Needed food. Needed to use the bathroom so badly my whole body hurt with it.
The pressure in my bladder was excruciating, my body trembling with the effort of holding everything in, the humiliation of my situation burning almost as much as the physical discomfort.
But mostly I just needed Sal.
Not in some vague, romantic way. In my body.
In my bones. I needed the heat of him, the cedar and sandalwood scent that meant safe, the weight of his arm thrown over my waist in the dark.
I needed his voice in my ear telling me he had me.
Lying on that filthy concrete, I ached for him so hard it eclipsed the cold, eclipsed the cramp in my empty stomach, eclipsed the rope biting into my wrists.
I wanted to be home. To be back in that enormous bed with the silk sheets, his hand splayed across my stomach, both of us alive and warm and his.
The thought surprised me. After everything I’d learned, after the betrayal, after finding out he’d orchestrated the worst day of my life... I still wanted him. Still needed him. Still believed, deep in my bones, that he would come for me.
Because he loved me.
And I loved him.
As fucked up as it was. As complicated as our history had become. I loved him, and I wasn’t angry anymore. I was just... tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of being alone.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway.
I tensed, expecting Logan. Expecting another confrontation, another slap, another reminder of everything I’d lost.
But the man who walked through the door wasn’t Logan.
It was Dominic.
The guard from the compound. The one who’d leered at me on the warehouse floor my very first night, who’d called me a waste and gotten told to shut his mouth. The one who’d cornered me in the hallway and called me a slut. The one whose arm Sal had broken in two places.
He was smiling.
“Well, well.” He crouched down in front of me, his face too close, his breath hot on my skin. “Look who’s all tied up and helpless. Not so protected now, are you?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like?” He stood up, spreading his arms wide. “I’ve been feeding patrol gaps and timing to Logan’s people since the day the boss snapped my arm. Security schedules. Guard rotations. Everything they needed to grab you right out from under his nose.”
My blood ran cold.
“You betrayed him.”
“He broke my arm.” Dominic’s smile disappeared, replaced by something ugly and hateful.
“In two places. Over some bitch he’d known for five minutes.
So yeah, I betrayed him. And when he finds out it was me, when he realizes his own man sold out his precious little whore.
.. Sal will learn not to underestimate his men. ”
He moved closer. Too close.
“But first, I think I’m going to take what I wanted that day in the hallway. Before his team gets here. Before anyone can stop me.”
He reached for me.
I moved faster.
The piece of glass had been digging into my palm for hours. A shard from one of the broken windows, small but sharp, hidden in my bound hands. I’d been working on the rope with it, sawing back and forth, making slow progress.
I slashed it across his face.
Dominic screamed. Blood poured from the cut on his cheek, running down his neck, dripping onto his shirt. He stumbled backward, clutching his face.
“You fucking bitch!”
He lunged for me.
And the door exploded inward.
The assault was coordinated. Brutal. Efficient. Men in black tactical gear pouring through every entrance, weapons raised, moving with the precision that only came from years of training.
Sal’s team.
Sal’s men.
Sal.
He came through the door like death itself, covered in blood that wasn’t his, his eyes wild and desperate and searching. Gunfire echoed from somewhere deeper in the building. Shouts. The sounds of bodies hitting the floor.
His eyes swept the room once, twice, and then they found me.
Everything else disappeared.
He closed the space between them in an instant. His fist connected with Dominic’s face and the man crumpled, unconscious before he hit the ground. Then Sal was on his knees beside me, a knife appearing in his hand, cutting through the ropes at my wrists and ankles.
“Cami.” His voice was ragged. Broken. “Cami, are you...”
The ropes fell away. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest so hard I could barely breathe.
“I thought I lost you.” The words were muffled against my hair. “I heard them take you. I was on the phone and I heard you scream and then the line went dead and I was still running, still running, and I thought...”