18. Cami
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Cami
The news was playing on every channel.
I sat at the kitchen island, a cup of coffee warming my hands, and watched the Caldwell empire crumble on screen. Headline after headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Footage of police cars and handcuffs and reporters shouting questions at people who had no answers.
THE CALDWELL FORTUNE IN RUINS
GRETA CALDWELL ARRESTED FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING
LOGAN CALDWELL CHARGED WITH KIDNAPPING, FACING LIFE IN PRISON
“Turn it up.” Julian was leaning against the counter, his glasses reflecting the television screen. “I want to hear this part.”
Pedro grabbed the remote and raised the volume.
“...Greta Caldwell was arrested early this morning. Police say she sold a woman to settle her son’s debts and then helped cover it up. It all began, they say, with an anonymous tip that handed investigators years of the family’s secrets...”
The footage cut to Greta being led out of her townhouse in handcuffs. Her face was pale. Shocked. Like she couldn’t quite believe this was happening to her.
Good.
I watched the woman who had dumped me on a warehouse floor, unconscious and helpless, expecting me to be killed. The woman who had slapped me at my own wedding for the crime of being publicly humiliated. The woman who had smiled while telling me I was pathetic.
Justice. Right there on the screen. Playing out for the whole world to see.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer lady,” Hendry said, reaching past me for a piece of toast. “You think she’ll cry in prison?”
“Definitely,” Pedro said. “Women like that always cry when they realize money can’t save them.”
“I hope her cellmate is mean.” Julian pushed his glasses up his nose. “Really, really mean.”
“Julian only gets that vicious about two things,” Pedro said. “People who hurt the boss, and anyone who so much as breathes near Vera.”
“I do not get vicious about Vera.”
“He’s been gone for her three years.” Hendry leaned in to stage-whisper at me, delighted. “Sends her flowers. Anonymously. She runs all our comms and half our hacking from a bunker two states over, and she’s convinced her secret admirer is some sad vendor in accounts payable.”
“It is a long game,” Julian said, with enormous dignity, and refused to look at any of us.
I snorted. Couldn’t help it. These men, these hardened mafia soldiers, were sitting around my kitchen table making jokes like we were at a brunch. Like watching the downfall of a criminal empire was just another Tuesday morning activity.
Sal’s hand found mine under the table.
I looked at him. He was bruised too, cuts on his face from the rescue, dark circles under his eyes from not sleeping. But he was here. Alive. Holding my hand like he never intended to let go.
He lifted my hand to his lips. Kissed my knuckles.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better.” I squeezed his fingers. “Watching Greta in handcuffs is surprisingly therapeutic.”
“Isn’t it?”
The news switched to coverage of Logan’s arrest. More footage. More handcuffs. More reporters shouting questions at a man who looked like he’d aged ten years overnight.
“Logan Caldwell has been charged with kidnapping, with assault, and with stealing millions from his own company. Police say more charges are coming...”
“It’s sad, really.” I took a sip of my coffee. “You’re not going to get your money back. After everything, all that work, and the company’s bankrupt.”
Sal raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“The debt. The two million, or four million, or whatever it was by the end. It’s gone. The company has nothing left.”
“Ah.” He smiled. A real smile, the kind that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been taking Logan’s company apart for months. Quietly. Piece by piece. Buying up his debts, taking the things that mattered, making sure I’d get back every penny he owed me and then some.”
“You... what?”
“The money isn’t gone, fiore.” He squeezed my hand. “It just changed hands.”
I stared at him. Trying to process what he was telling me.
“But the company is bankrupt. The news just said...”
“The company is bankrupt because I took everything worth having before it fell. The buildings. The land. Anything that made money. All of it quietly signed over to me.” He shrugged. “Logan was too busy gambling and fucking your sister to notice his empire being carved up beneath him.”
Julian whistled. “Cold, boss.”
“Efficient,” Sal corrected. “There’s a difference.”
I was still staring at him. Still trying to understand.
“So you got your money back.”
“I got much more than my money back.” He turned to face me fully, his gray eyes soft in a way I’d rarely seen. “And it’s not mine.”
“What?”
“The money. The assets. Everything I recovered from the Caldwell collapse.” He lifted my hand again. Kissed my palm this time. “It’s yours.”
The kitchen went quiet.
“What?” I whispered.
“It’s only fair.” His voice was gentle but certain.
“You spent four years on that company. Making it work. Making it grow. Cleaning up Logan’s messes and covering for his incompetence.
You should have been rewarded for every single moment you spent there.
For having to stand him. For every second you suffered. ”
“Sal...”
“I’m going to make sure you become rich with every single penny Logan Caldwell ever owned.
” His thumb traced circles on my palm. “And then some more. You’ll never be homeless and penniless again like you were when he betrayed you.
Never, ever again. You’ll always have your own money.
Your own security. Your own safety net for whatever the fuck you want to do with your life. ”
I couldn’t speak. My throat was too tight. My eyes were burning.
Julian and Hendry and Pedro were all grinning, nodding, making sounds of approval.
“Boss is smooth,” Pedro said. “I’ll give him that.”
“Take notes, gentlemen,” Julian added. “This is how you treat a woman.”
Sal ignored them. His eyes never left my face.
“It’s not necessary,” I managed. “I don’t need...”
“It is necessary.” He cut me off. “You deserve it. You deserve everything. And I’m going to make sure you have all of it, for as long as you let me stay.”
And then he kissed me.
Right there at the kitchen table, in front of his men, with the news still playing in the background. A soft, sweet kiss that said more than words ever could.
I cried.
I couldn’t help it. The tears spilled over, running down my cheeks, dripping onto our joined hands. I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his neck and sobbed until there was nothing left in me.
He held me through it. Stroked my hair. Murmured soft words in Italian that I didn’t understand but felt in my bones.
When I finally pulled back, wiping my eyes, the men had conveniently found other things to look at. The ceiling. Their phones. The very interesting pattern of the tile floor.
I laughed. A wet, shaky sound.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Always.”
***
She came that afternoon.
I almost didn’t believe it when Pedro buzzed through from the gate. “Boss. You’re going to want to see who’s at the front. Says she needs to speak with you. Says it’s about her son.”
Greta Caldwell.
Out on bail, somehow. Bonded out while the ink was still wet on the indictment, because money still bought a few small things even when it could no longer buy your way out of a federal trafficking charge.
And now she was standing in the gravel drive of the compound where she’d dumped me in a wedding dress, wearing a coat that cost more than most people earn in a year, looking smaller than I had ever seen her.
I went out to meet her before Sal could. This one was mine.
She straightened when she saw me. Some old reflex of superiority flickered across her face, the exact look she’d worn when she crossed that aisle and slapped me.
Then it died. Because she understood, finally, where she was standing.
Whose house this was. Whose name was the only thing keeping her son from being found in a ditch instead of a cell.
“Camellia.” Her voice wasn’t ice anymore. It was thin. Cracking. “I need to speak to Salvatore. Please. They’re saying Logan could get life. There must be something he can do. A word to the right people. The evidence, if some of it were to disappear...”
“You drove all the way out here.” I kept my voice even. Pleasant, almost. “To the place you left me to die. To ask me for help.”
Her jaw tightened. For half a second I watched her want to slap me again. Watched her hand twitch at her side.
She didn’t dare.
That was the whole thing, right there. The entire shape of how everything had changed.
In that church she’d struck me in front of the entire congregation and not one of them had moved.
Here, on this gravel, with Sal’s men at the windows and the weight of his name behind me, she stood with her hand shaking and did not dare to touch me.
“You handed me to a stranger to settle your son’s debt,” I said.
“You told them no one would come looking. You were almost right.” I stepped closer, and this time she was the one who flinched.
“So here is what’s going to happen, Greta.
Nothing. That’s what Salvatore is going to do for you.
Nothing. That’s what I’m going to do for you.
Nothing. You’re going to stand trial for exactly what you did.
And every single day you sit in that cell, you’re going to know that the girl you threw away like garbage is the reason you’re there. ”
The tears started then. Real ones. Ugly and disbelieving, the makeup going with them.
“You don’t understand. He’s my son.”
“I had a family too.” My voice didn’t shake, and I was proud of that, the same way I’d been proud of it in the church. “You taught me exactly how much that’s worth.”
I turned my back on her. The way she’d turned hers on me on that warehouse floor.
“Pedro. See Mrs. Caldwell off the property. If she comes back, she’s trespassing.”