7. Wolfe
WOLFE
I didn’t remember starting the engine.
Didn’t remember turning the wheel. Didn’t remember the gravel crunching beneath my tires as I pulled away from the cemetery, the sound of the iron gate slamming shut behind me like a warning. Like it was trying to keep something in—or trying to keep me out.
But I was driving.
Wet, quiet, empty streets. The kind that belonged to ghosts.
The kind that didn’t remember your name even if you bled on the pavement.
My hands gripped the steering wheel too tightly. Leather bit into my palms. The windshield wipers swiped in slow rhythm, but they couldn’t erase what I still saw.
Cloe .
Kneeling in the rain.
Her knees buried in the grass. Her curls matted to her face. Her voice too soft to hear, but not too soft to feel.
She talked to that stone like it would answer. Like Camille would rise and tell her everything was okay. Like she still believed in mercy.
Camille’s name was etched behind her head like a crown. And in front of her—flat on the marble—a photo. Two girls laughing in silk. I remembered the night that picture was taken.
Camille had texted me afterwards. Said Cloe cried when she got home. Said she gave her leftovers from dinner and the dress she “didn’t like.”
Said it felt good to do something right.
I never answered.
Didn’t know what to say.
Didn’t think Camille needed me to say anything when she already knew the truth.
Cloe didn’t belong.
She never had.
And yet?—
There she was.
Still .
Haunting every fucking place Camille had touched .
I passed under a bridge and a truck blew past on the other side, spraying water across my windshield with a slap. The glass shuddered beneath the force. It felt like being hit.
Like a curse.
I clenched the steering wheel harder. My jaw ached from the tension.
I should’ve never followed her.
Should’ve let her sit there in the rain until her knees bled and her voice went hoarse.
Should’ve let her rot in her guilt. Let her choke on it the way we did when we picked out the casket. When we signed the death certificate. When we cleaned out Camille’s office and sold her apartment and scrubbed her laughter out of our goddamn lives just to survive .
But I didn’t.
I followed her.
And I watched.
And I felt something I had no business feeling.
Not for her.
Not for Camille’s ghost in a too-tight skirt and trembling hands.
Cloe was a shadow.
A stain.
A girl who walked like she’d been taught to shrink.
But when she turned her head?—
When she pressed her hand to the marble and whispered Camille’s name?—
She looked nothing like a ghost.
She looked ruined.
And she wore it well.
I hated that.
I hated how my cock stirred when I saw her wet and desperate and broken open by memory.
Not because she reminded me of Camille.
But because she didn’t.
Because whatever she’d been two years ago—Camille’s project, the pretty charity case in a borrowed dress—she wasn’t that anymore.
Now she was wreckage.
And I was the storm circling her name.
I pulled into the private garage beneath the Lawlor tower. Rolled into the reserved space near the elevator. No security. No witnesses. Just concrete and shadows.
I turned off the engine.
Sat there.
Breathing.
Listening to the rain outside the building like it was trying to drive something out of me.
My jacket clung to my shoulders. My shirt was plastered to my back. Rainwater trickled down the back of my neck like penance.
I ran my hand through my hair, slicked it back, felt the sting of memory in my knuckles.
I hadn’t meant to shove her.
But I had.
I saw the way she hit the stone. The way her breath caught. The way the photo fell.
And I saw her face when she looked back at me.
Not fear.
Not rage.
Just resignation.
Like she’d been expecting it.
Like she’d known all along that I’d come for her.
And still—she let me.
Still—she stayed.
I leaned back in the driver’s seat.
Closed my eyes.
And tried not to picture her soaked to the skin.
Tried not to remember how her blouse clung to her ribs. How her knees pressed together like she was holding herself in.
How her voice shook when she said she missed Camille.
I didn’t know what scared me more.
That I believed her.
Or that I wanted her anyway.
The elevator ride was silent.
Fifteen floors.
Just me and the sound of my own heart pounding too fast, too hard, like it was trying to climb out of my chest before I did something worse than what I’d already done.
I didn’t stop at my floor.
Didn’t go home.
Instead, I went two levels higher.
Where Barron was.
Where the real silence lived.
Because if I was unraveling?
I was going to drag him with me.
The hallway outside Barron’s office was quiet—too quiet. That kind of quiet that wasn’t stillness, but pressure. Like the walls were listening.
I didn’t knock.
Didn’t need to.
He’d hear me.
And if he didn’t? He’d feel me.
I stepped inside.
Found him exactly where I knew he’d be.
Behind the glass desk. Sleeves rolled. Tie loosened but not gone. Posture straight. Jaw clenched like he’d been holding in a scream since 2019.
A storm held hostage in skin.
He didn’t look up.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he said. “Out.”
“I found her,” I said.
His pen paused mid-signature. Just for a second.
Then kept moving.
“Where.”
“At Camille’s grave.”
He stopped writing.
Good .
I didn’t move from the doorway.
Didn’t sit.
Just stood there and watched the man who used to be our shield. The one who once held this family on his back like it wouldn’t crush him .
Now he looked like a man barely holding the line between grief and collapse.
“She was talking to her,” I added. “Brought that photo. The one from her birthday dinner. You know the one.”
He didn’t speak.
“She cried,” I said, voice lower now. “Said she missed her. Said she tried.”
Still nothing.
I let the silence hang.
Then:
“I shoved her into the headstone.”
His head snapped up.
His eyes—ice cold. Sharpened .
“What?”
“She didn’t fall,” I clarified. “But she felt it.”
“You touched her?”
I shrugged. “She was saying things she shouldn’t.”
Barron stood.
Slow.
Controlled .
His hands braced on the desk like it was the only thing keeping him from losing it.
“You don’t get to decide what Camille meant to her,” he said.
“Neither do you.”
“Then why the fuck did you go?” he snapped.
“Because you won’t.”
That landed.
He didn’t say it, but I felt the energy shift.
“You keep pretending like she’s just another intern,” I said. “But you see her. You watch her. You don’t fire her. You dress her down, and then leave the door unlocked so she can come back in. ”
His jaw clenched tighter. A tic in his cheek.
“She smells like her, Barron.”
His eyes closed. Just once.
“She walks like her. Until she doesn’t. And then it’s worse.”
I stepped forward. One step.
“She’s not Camille.”
“I know.”
“She’s ruining you.”
“No,” he said quietly. “She’s waking something up.”
That made me pause.
Not because it was wrong.
But because he said it like it scared him too.
I turned to leave.
“Do whatever you want with her,” I said. “But don’t pretend like you haven’t already started.”
And then I left.
Left him standing in the silence he built.
Now infected with her name.
I didn’t go home.
I went to the penthouse gym.
Turned off the lights.
Wrapped my hands.
Punched until my knuckles burned and the pads split.
Didn’t stop.
Didn’t breathe.
Every time I blinked, I saw her.
Rainwater on her cheeks. That fucking photo at Camille’s grave.
And worse?
The look on her face when I shoved her.
Like she deserved it.
Like she wanted it.
When the fourth bag split, I stood in the dark, soaked in sweat, fists slick and red. Then I walked into the locker room and stripped off everything that clung.
I stepped into the industrial-grade shower. Let the water hit me until my skin went numb. Until my pulse stopped fighting. Until I didn’t feel like I was drowning in her perfume anymore.
I dried off in silence.
Dressed in silence.
Poured whiskey into a coffee mug and sat on the armrest of my own leather chair like I didn’t deserve the seat.
And stared out at the city.
Waiting for something that would never come.
She was the one who got away.
Not because we lost her.
But because she left.
Left us with Camille’s things boxed in the closet.
Left us with blood on our hands and no answers.
Left us to rot in the ruin she never looked back at.
And now?
Now she was crawling through our hallways like the grief belonged to her.
But worse?
She wasn’t pretending anymore.
She meant it.
Every time she looked at Camille’s plaque. Every time she touched her name. Every time she tried to smile in that goddamn skirt that didn’t fit.
She was trying.
And that made it worse.
Because I didn’t want her to try.
I wanted her to bleed.
I finished the drink.
Set it down.
Looked at the blood on my knuckles.
She doesn’t get to wear my sister’s memory like a second skin.
She doesn’t get to grieve here without a cost.
And I’ll be the one to remind her what it costs to be a ghost in this house.