7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
K ane
She doesn’t show.
Not at four-thirty.
Not at four-thirty-five.
Not at four-fucking-thirty-seven.
Every second that ticks by isn’t just time, it’s a match head dragged across my nerves, sparking something sharp and volatile in my chest. The bourbon on the table sits untouched, golden and glowing, mocking me with its silence. My jaw flexes once. Twice. Hard enough I feel it crack.
She’s late.
Or she’s stupid.
Or she’s testing me.
None of these things end well for her.
I let her have those extra minutes, not because I’m generous, but because I like the feel of the tension. It feeds something dark inside me. Gives it teeth.
I stare at the door.
Then I stop staring at the door.
Then I pick up my phone.
I almost call her. Thumb hovering over her name, the compulsion sharp and immediate, where the fuck are you, Princesa? But I don’t press it. She’d like that. She’d think she got under my skin.
And she did.
But not the way she thinks.
I don’t chase.
I don’t beg.
I don’t play nice.
I corner.
I punish.
I make sure the lesson sticks.
I call Joaquin instead. First ring.
“Where is she?”
“She left Sinclair hours ago,” he says. “Dropped everything. Emergency at a place called Haven House.”
Haven House.
My fingers start tapping against the table. It’s not casual. It’s controlled. Measured. A warning.
“She go alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Send the address.”
It hits my phone before he can say anything else. I’m already standing, chair scraping back, the sound sharp enough to make the waiter jump.
He says something. I don’t hear it. Don’t care.
Camille Sinclair just chose a building full of broken strangers over me.
She didn’t cancel. She didn’t explain.
She vanished.
And I don’t do silence well.
***
Rain stabs down like needles, slicing across the roof of the car with violent rhythm. The city looks different here, older, forgotten. Like it’s held its breath for years and finally exhaled every ugly secret it was paid to bury.
The townhouse in front of me isn’t much. Red brick. Peeling paint. A door warped by too many winters and too few repairs. No cameras. No guards. Just grief behind closed walls.
And Camille’s inside.
I open the door, step out. The rain doesn’t fall on me, it attacks me. Soaks through my clothes in seconds, clings to my skin like a second layer. My jaw is already dripping; my shirt plastered to my spine. But I walk.
Because fuck appearances. I’m not here to be seen.
I’m here to see what she’s running from.
Inside, the air is warm, but not in any way that comforts. It smells like bleach trying to cover rot. Like trauma scrubbed raw but still festering under the surface. Too quiet. Too still. The kind of silence that screams.
And then, her voice.
Soft. Barely there. The kind of voice you only use when you’re handing someone a piece of your soul and praying, they don’t drop it.
“When I was ten….my father had this friend…”
Everything in me stills.
The hallway disappears. My breath cuts off. My spine locks in place.
“…he touched me...hurt me…in ways no adult should ever touch a child. When I threatened to tell, he panicked. Dragged me to the edge of my parents’ yacht… and shoved me into the freezing ocean. In the dark.”
I stop breathing.
Not a breath.
Not a blink.
Not a single fucking muscle moves.
And then…Rage.
Not the loud kind.
Not fire.
No.
This burns low.
Controlled.
Focused. The kind of rage that builds prisons.
That makes men disappear. I can feel it.
Rising. Pouring through me in thick, molten waves.
Not a flicker. Not a flash. A flood. A silent, violent promise in the shape of blood.
I press my back to the wall, fingers digging into the doorframe until they ache, white-knuckled and violent with restraint.
My jaw grinds, bones screaming. My pulse?
Thunder. Pounding through my skull like war drums.
She was ten.
Fucking Ten.
Someone touched her. Hurt her.
Tried to drown her.
Tried to erase her.
Small. Scared. Alone. And no one protected her.
She carried it. Alone.
All this time.
Buried it so deep… and now? She’s giving it to a little girl in a whisper, and she has no idea I’m standing outside this door, hearing the truth she’s never said aloud. A truth I was never meant to have.
But now I do.
I step back. One breath. Two.
Quiet. Controlled.
Joaquin answers immediately, tense and alert. “Already there.”
“I need you to dig deeper into Camille's background.” My voice is low, deadly in its calm. “I want everything you missed, every whispered name, every hidden date. Anyone who lingered too long near her, any shadow we overlooked. Leave nothing unturned this time.”
A hesitant pause echoes on the line. Joaquin’s words are careful, measured. “Kane, we’ve combed through it twice…”
“Then rip it apart a third fucking time,” I bite out, fury sharpening every word.
“Dig until you’re bleeding. Her childhood, her family, her father’s fucking circle.
Every connection. Every guest who stepped onto her family’s yacht from the first moment she did.
Every bastard who visited the Sinclair house, every set of eyes that watched her grow. ”
A beat of silence, then his voice, hardened and determined.
“Copy that.”
The phone creaks in my hand. Cracks spider through the glass from how hard I’m holding it. I don’t even feel it.
My vision is blurred by rain on the windows, but it might as well be blood.
Because this isn’t just hers anymore.
Her ghosts are mine now.
And the man who put them there?
I’m going to find him.
And when I do?
I’m going to tear him apart so completely the only thing left will be the silence he gave her.
***
Joaquin texts at 2:03 a.m.
It’s done. Check your inbox.
I don’t sleep. I don’t pace. I sit in my penthouse with the lights off, soaked clothes long since discarded, a glass of bourbon in my hand and Camille under my skin like a fever I can’t sweat out.
The file hits my inbox seconds later. I open it on my tablet, jaw already tight, muscles strung so high I can feel my heartbeat in my teeth.
I read.
And I read again.
Every log, every social event, every “accidental fall” on a boat. Yacht party manifests, guest lists from Palm Beach to Cannes. Birthday photos. Donor galas. Family vacations. All pristine. All polished. All fake.
And none of it tells me what I need to know.
None of it gives me a name.
The man who pushed her?
The man who hurt her?
Gone. Scrubbed. Buried beneath layers of Sinclair money and legacy.
All I have is a blurry security still from a dock camera taken two weeks after the incident. A faceless group of men in suits walking off the family’s yacht. Four men. One boy. None labeled. None identified.
My hands curl into fists so tight I hear the bones in my fingers crack.
I throw the tablet.
It hits the far wall, shatters.
Good.
Because what I feel right now?
It doesn’t belong in a neat little PDF.
I grab my phone, dial Joaquin again.
He answers instantly. Doesn’t breathe. He knows.
“This is clean,” I say, voice dead calm. The kind of calm that gets people killed. “Too clean.”
“They wiped it,” he replies. “The whole incident. It’s like it never happened. Medical records, trip logs, even payroll. Anyone connected to that night’s either been bought off or buried so deep they’re untouchable.”
“Nothing is untouchable,” I snarl. “Not with the right kind of pressure.”
“I’ve already got feelers out. Black card stuff. Former staff. Quiet money. Might take time.”
“I’ll give you time,” I say, “but not too much. I want his name, Joaquin. And I want the address where I can make him wish he never fucking existed.”
Silence crackles down the line. Then:
“You got it.”
I hang up.
The city glows outside my floor-to-ceiling windows, all steel and glitter and delusion. I stare out at it, shirtless, half-drunk on fury, soaked in vengeance.
She was ten.
And they left her…
To bury it.
To perform on cue. To smile and wave and be “the Sinclair daughter” while her skin remembered the hands of a man who should be a fucking corpse. Will be very soon.
***
I hear her whisper, raw and shaking, still echoing in my skull.
My father had a friend….
He hurt me…
I told him I’d tell…
He pushed me over the side of our yacht…
I can’t unhear it. Can’t unsee her kneeling on the floor of that rec room, offering her pain like it was a gift, quiet, trembling truth meant for someone else, not for me. But I took it anyway. Branded it into my bones.
I haven’t moved in hours.
The bourbon’s gone. The glass is warm from how long I’ve been holding it.
And then my phone buzzes.
I stare down at the screen.
Javi – Miami.
My jaw tightens. I set the glass down, the ice clinking softly like a countdown clock.
It’s never good news when Javi calls me after midnight.
I answer, voice tight. “Talk.”
“It’s bad,” he says, clipped, urgency threading his words.
Fuck.
He wouldn’t disturb me in New York unless shit was serious.
“What happened?”
His breath comes ragged through the speaker, frustration simmering beneath his tone.
“Convoy got hit. The shipment leaving the Everglades warehouse, bound for Little Havana, guns, coke, cash. Three trucks, full load. Should’ve been clean, but someone tipped them off.
Ambushed us right outside Miami Gardens.
Automatic fire, military-grade gear. Precision hit. ”
My chest grows tight, heat flooding my veins. I already know the answer before I ask, dread sitting heavily in my gut.
“Casualties?”
“Six dead on the spot,” Javi says, voice hollow, a carefully controlled anger beneath it. “Three others critical. Docs aren’t optimistic.”
I close my eyes briefly, jaw clenching until my teeth ache. Six men down. Men who trusted me, men I swore to protect. But something darker tightens in my chest at the edge in Javi’s voice. He’s holding back.
“Javi,” I warn. “What aren’t you telling me?”