22. Chapter Twenty-two #2
She’s not ready to admit it yet, so I don’t push. I watch, vigilant, calculating. But I made the call to the doctor anyway quietly, discreetly, behind her back. She won’t find out unless she asks, unless she confronts me directly.
She might be scared to confirm it.
I’m not.
Because if I’m right, if this thing inside her is real, is ours, then it changes everything.
Not just how deeply I protect her, how obsessively I watch her, how viciously I’ll shield her.
But how far I’ll go.
Because I’ve already killed for her. Spilled blood for her.
But for this…for what she might be carrying, what she’s growing inside her?
I’ll raze entire fucking empires to ash and bathe in the blood of every man who ever thought he could touch what’s mine.
Camille
We slip away quietly, just after noon, without fanfare or explanation. No guards. No entourage. Just Kane and me, gliding through the city in one of his sleek black cars, his hand resting lightly on my thigh as the ocean glitters just beyond the highway.
He takes me to a small private cove, an unassuming stretch of beach he owns but rarely visits.
The sand is pale gold, the air warm and heavy with salt, the surf lapping gently at the shore.
Here, Miami feels distant, muted. All that remains is us, the vast horizon, and something fragile growing quietly inside me that I’m not ready to name yet.
Kane lays out a blanket, and we sit quietly, shoulder to shoulder, watching the water break and foam along the shore. He hasn’t let go of me, one hand gently wrapped around mine like he’s afraid I’ll vanish.
“You’re quiet,” he murmurs eventually.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“Change,” I whisper, not ready to say more.
He doesn’t press. Instead, he strokes his thumb over my knuckles, gaze locked forward, expression thoughtful but calm. Gentle. It’s a rare softness in him, something I cherish because it’s fleeting easily fractured by the world waiting beyond this tiny haven.
“Whatever it is,” he says slowly, carefully, “I’m here. We handle it together.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not.” His eyes flicker toward mine, shadowed by something heavier. “But it doesn’t matter how complicated it gets. I’m not going anywhere.”
I swallow hard, nodding, wanting desperately to hold onto that promise. I lean against his shoulder, let him hold my weight, listening to the steady thud of his heart beneath my ear.
He’s silent for a long beat.
Then quietly, fiercely, he whispers, “You’re safe, Camille. Always. I swear it.”
I close my eyes and let myself believe him…even if just for today.
Javi
Across the city, deep in the cold, sterile shadows of Kane’s compound, the quiet is sharp. Joaquin and I stand in front of surveillance monitors, faces bathed in the pale glow of the screens, tension thickening the silence between us.
It’s Joaquin who breaks first. “We got a fucking problem.”
“I see it,” I say quietly.
The screen in front of us shows footage from a security camera outside the nightclub Kane owns in Brickell. Two figures in grainy black and white, caught exchanging words near the loading docks.
One is unmistakably recognizable: Rojas himself, lean, careful, a shadow Kane is determined to erase.
The other…
Joaquin’s voice turns cold. “It’s Luis.”
Luis Torres. One of ours. One of Kane’s personal security…someone trusted, vetted, close enough to breathe the same air as Camille.
“How long?” Joaquin murmurs. “How fucking long has he been talking?”
I clench my jaw. “Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t get to talk again.”
Joaquin nods, eyes hardening. “Kane needs to know.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say sharply, taking my phone from my pocket. “Luis is fucking dead already. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Joaquin doesn’t move, eyes still fixed on the screen. “This runs deeper. If Rojas flipped Luis, there could be more.”
I know exactly what he means. “Then we root them out. Quietly. Kane’s distracted…”
“Protecting her,” Joaquin interrupts softly.
We exchange a glance heavy with meaning.
“And we protect him,” I finish coldly. “No matter what.”
I step away, phone pressed to my ear, dialing Kane. It rings once. Twice. Three times before he picks up.
“Speak,” Kane answers, voice low, calm, distant. He’s with her…I hear the ocean, the quiet.
“We have a problem,” I say quietly. “Rojas flipped one of ours.”
Silence.
Then Kane’s voice, deadly calm: “Who?”
“Luis Torres.”
The pause is sharp. Kane doesn’t breathe.
“Bring him in,” he says finally, words dripping with cold, ruthless certainty. “No one touches him but me.”
He hangs up before I can respond, the line going abruptly silent.
I turn back to Joaquin, my voice ice-cold. “You heard him.”
Joaquin nods once, grim and knowing. “Consider it done.”
Camille
Kane’s jaw flexes tight as he ends the call, the barely-there movement a faint tremor beneath his carefully maintained composure. But it’s enough I feel it immediately, that shift that warns me something just fractured beneath his calm.
“What happened?” My voice comes softly, cautious as though a sudden movement might shatter whatever fragile truth he’s holding.
He hesitates for half a breath, eyes distant, storm clouds brewing behind the practiced blankness. Then he reaches for my hand, lifting it gently to his lips. The soft brush of his mouth over my knuckles sends warmth sliding through my veins, even as unease curls sharply in my stomach.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he murmurs, tone too gentle, too deliberate.
I study him closely, tracing the tight line of his mouth, the hard edge of his jaw. He’s lying, protecting me but I don’t need gentle lies. I need him.
“Kane.”
His exhale comes rough, almost pained, thumb stroking restlessly across my palm. His eyes fix on our joined hands as if anchoring himself, steadying the violence swirling inside him.
“There’s a problem.” He pauses, the words raw like sandpaper on skin. “A leak in my circle. Someone close. Someone I trusted.”
A pang slices deep inside my chest, the ache immediate and personal, as if the betrayal were mine. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, heart cracking at the shadows edging his eyes.
He tightens his grip, almost imperceptibly, like he’s afraid I’ll slip away if he doesn’t hold on tighter. “This isn’t your fault.”
I swallow hard, feeling the helpless frustration burning up my throat. “It feels like it.”
“Don’t,” he says fiercely, voice low, commanding, filled with something like desperation. “You don’t carry my burdens, Camille. They’re mine alone.”
I turn my gaze toward the horizon, the ocean shimmering beneath the sunlight, so deceptively peaceful too beautiful for this storm swirling between us. “When you hurt, I feel it too, Kane. Whether you like it or not.”
Silence stretches out between us, taut and uncertain. I know he’s listening, absorbing it, wrestling with truths neither of us wanted to face.
“I don’t deserve you,” he says finally, voice rough, stripped bare of defenses.
A bittersweet ache spreads through my chest, softening my voice to a whisper. “I don’t think love works like that. We don’t get what we deserve, we get what we’re brave enough to fight for.”
His eyes shut briefly, jaw locked tight, the muscles there working as though he’s fighting something within himself. His hand tightens further around mine, like I’m his anchor, the one thing that keeps him from drifting away.
“Then I’ll fight for you,” he promises fiercely, almost savagely. “Until I can’t breathe. Until there’s nothing left.”
We don’t speak again after that. There’s no need. Instead, we sit quietly, letting the silence wrap around us, filled only by the distant crash of waves and the slow, cautious beat of two hearts tangled in something fierce, messy, and beautifully uncertain.
This quiet moment, fragile and fleeting as it is, feels stolen, borrowed from a reality that neither of us trusts completely.
But right now, it’s enough.
***
The sun dips toward the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purples and burning oranges.
The breeze grows cooler, slicing gently through my hair, lifting strands around my face as though even the wind senses my restlessness.
Kane sits next to me, shoulders squared, jaw clenched tight enough I can see the muscle twitching.
He watches the horizon like something is coming, something he has to face before it reaches me.
He hasn’t glanced at his phone since the call, hasn’t shifted his weight or moved from my side, but his stillness screams louder than any words ever could. I feel it vibrating through his body, the tension like a wire about to snap.
“Do you want to go?” I finally ask, my voice barely louder than the whisper of wind.
His thumb moves over my knuckles, a slow, deliberate stroke, as if he’s memorizing the texture of my skin. “I don’t want to take you back to that world yet.”
“Do you think I’m safer here?” My voice comes out softer than I meant it to, more vulnerable.
“I know you are,” he murmurs with quiet certainty.
I nod slowly, my chest heavy, a strange tiredness slipping into my bones. Gravity seems to pull harder lately, sinking me deeper into thoughts I haven’t dared to voice yet. My stomach shifts, not sharply, but with that subtle, lingering nausea I’ve grown accustomed to hiding.
It’s becoming impossible to ignore the queasy mornings, the way my body protests the scent of espresso now, how my emotions swing like a pendulum, dizzyingly high one moment and heartbreakingly low the next.
Tears fill my eyes for no reason, laughter bubbles up unprompted, and every feeling comes too strong, too fast.
But I haven’t told him.
I don’t even know how to begin to put words around the fragile secret I’ve been guarding inside myself. I can’t say it out loud, not yet. Not without shattering this fragile truce, this carefully constructed silence we both cling to as if it were armor against the truth.