5. Cami
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Cami
Consciousness came back in pieces.
Cold first. Concrete beneath my cheek, rough and damp, leaching the warmth from my skin. Then the smell. Industrial. Oil and metal and something chemical I couldn’t name.
My eyes opened.
Gray walls. High ceilings crisscrossed with exposed pipes.
Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, too bright, making my head pound.
The wedding dress was still on my body, but it wasn’t white anymore.
Gray with filth. Torn in so many places I’d lost count.
The skirt was bunched around my thighs, the bodice hanging loose where someone had ripped the lace.
I pushed myself up on shaking arms. The world tilted. Nausea rolled through my stomach and I had to close my eyes, breathe through it, wait for the spinning to stop.
When I opened them again, I saw the guns.
Men. At least six of them. Standing at every door, every corner, every possible exit. All of them armed. All of them staring at me with expressions that ranged from confusion to outright bewilderment.
What the fuck.
What the actual fuck.
Greta’s voice cut through the fog in my head. Sharp. Impatient. Coming from somewhere behind me.
“Tell your boss she’s a goodwill gesture. We’ll pay the debt. Can even take her as part of the payment.” A pause. The click of expensive heels on concrete. “He can keep her and do whatever he wants with her. No one will look for her.”
I twisted around, my ruined dress catching on the floor. Greta was standing near a metal door, her back already turned, her men flanking her like shadows.
“Wait.” The word scraped out of my throat. “Wait, you can’t just...”
One of the guards near the door started to say something, a grunt of protest or confusion, but Greta was already moving. Her heels clicked faster, more urgent, and then the door slammed shut behind her.
She was gone.
She’d dumped me here. Garbage to be left behind. And she was gone.
The guard who’d tried to speak was already on his phone, rapid Italian pouring out of him in a low, urgent stream. My brain caught the words despite the fog, despite the fear. Four years of language classes and a semester abroad finally paying off in the worst possible way.
“She just left her here. No, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. She said she was payment for the Caldwell debt. Yes. Yes, I understand. We’ll wait.”
He hung up. His eyes found mine.
“Don’t move.” The accent was thick but the English was clear. “He’s coming.”
“Who’s coming?” My voice came out raw. Wrecked. “Where am I? What the fuck is happening?”
No answer. The guard just stared at me with something that might have been pity, then looked away.
“Hey.” I tried to stand. My legs buckled and I caught myself on my hands, palms scraping against the concrete. “Hey, I’m talking to you. Who’s coming? Where did she take me?”
Nothing. The guards exchanged glances but none of them spoke. None of them moved to help me. They just stood there with their guns and their silence, watching me like I was a bomb that might go off.
All except one.
He stood near the far wall, younger than the others, a thin scar splitting one eyebrow and a way of looking at me that had nothing to do with pity.
His eyes crawled over the torn bodice of my dress, the bare skin where the lace had ripped, and his mouth curled into something that made my stomach turn.
“Shame to waste her on the boss,” he said. Just loud enough.
“Shut your mouth, Dominic.” The guard who’d called it in didn’t even turn around. “You heard nothing. You saw nothing. And you do not touch her. Not unless you want to explain yourself to him.”
Dominic’s smirk didn’t fade. But he leaned back against the wall and said nothing more.
I filed his face away without knowing why. Some instinct. The same instinct that had been screaming at me for months before today, the one I’d spent four years learning to ignore.
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes of sitting on a cold concrete floor in a ruined wedding dress, surrounded by armed men who wouldn’t look at me, waiting for someone whose name I didn’t know.
My mind was racing. Greta had said debt. Payment. She’d called me a goodwill gesture. Logan owed someone money, someone dangerous enough that his mother thought she could trade a human being to settle the score.
What the fuck had I gotten myself into?
What the fuck had Logan gotten me into?
The warehouse door slammed open.
Every guard in the room snapped to attention. Spines straightening. Eyes forward. An instant, instinctive response that only came from fear.
A man walked in.
No. Not walked. Prowled. A predator entering his territory, surveying his domain, taking stock of everything and everyone in it.
Dark hair, slightly disheveled. A tailored suit that probably cost more than my car. And eyes... God, his eyes. Cold gray. The color of frozen steel. The color of a winter sky right before a storm.
He was gorgeous.
He was terrifying.
His gaze swept the room, passed over his men, and landed on me. His gray eyes sharpened on me. His jaw tightened.
Oh my God.
Whatever fear I’d felt before doubled. Tripled. This man was in charge. This man was the one Greta had been trying to pay off. This man was the reason I was lying on a concrete floor in a destroyed wedding dress with no idea if I was going to live through the night.
“Where is Greta Caldwell?” His voice matched his eyes. Cold. Controlled. A voice that never needed to be raised because people listened the first time.
The guard who’d been on the phone stepped forward. “Gone, boss. Said this one was part of the payment for her son’s debt.”
The man’s expression went blank. Not angry. Not confused. Just... empty. Like someone had wiped all the emotion off his face and left nothing behind.
“She dropped a human being at my warehouse.” The words came out slow. Deliberate. “As payment.”
“Yes, boss.”
“She dropped a human being. At my warehouse. As payment.” He repeated it like he couldn’t quite believe it. Like the concept was so absurd his brain was having trouble processing it.
Then he turned to me.
Those gray eyes studied me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. Taking in the ruined dress, the dirt on my face, the way I was shaking despite my best efforts to hold still.
“The bride from the Caldwell wedding.”
It wasn’t a question.
My blood ran cold. How the fuck did he know that? How the fuck did he know who I was?
“How do you...” The words died in my throat.
“I make it my business to know things.” He took a step closer. Then another. “Especially things that involve people who owe me money.”
We stared at each other. His eyes were unreadable. Mine were probably showing every ounce of terror I was trying to hide.
Don’t show fear. Don’t show fear. Don’t show fear.
“I’m so glad my humiliation is entertaining.” The words came out sharper than I intended. Braver than I felt.
One dark eyebrow lifted. “You’re not afraid of me.”
Yes. Yes I was. I was scared shitless. My hands were trembling. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run, to hide, to curl up in a ball and pray this was all a nightmare I’d wake up from.
But I’d be damned if I showed him that.
“You’re not even in the top three worst things that have happened to me today.”
His expression flickered. Surprise, maybe. Or amusement. It was gone before I could name it.
He started circling me. Slow. Deliberate. A shark scenting blood in the water.
“I don’t deal in human trafficking.” His voice was conversational now. Almost pleasant. “And I don’t fucking accept people as payment. So you’re a problem.”
My throat tightened. “A problem.”
“You’ve seen my face. Seen my warehouse. Seen my men.” He stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. “That makes you a liability.”
“I don’t even know who you are.” The words tumbled out fast, desperate. “I don’t know where the hell I am. I don’t know anything.”
“Salvatore.” He said it like he was giving me a gift. Just the one name. No surname, no title. He gave me that much and kept the rest.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
“Don’t fucking tell me that!” My voice cracked. “I didn’t want to know! Why would you tell me your name?”
“Because you asked.”
“I didn’t ask! I specifically said I didn’t know who you were! That was the opposite of asking!”
That flicker again. Definitely amusement this time. The bastard was enjoying this.
“Let me go, then.” I kept my voice level. “If you don’t deal in human trafficking and you don’t accept people as payment, then let me go. I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again.”
He shook his head. Slow. Almost regretful.
“To what?”
The question hit me square in the gut.
To what. To what would I go back to? My apartment was Logan’s apartment. My job was at Logan’s company. My savings account was empty. My family had chosen my sister over me.
There was nothing. There was no one. There was nowhere to go and no one waiting for me and nothing left of the life I’d spent four years building.
But I wasn’t going to admit that out loud. Not to this man. Not to anyone.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Everything that happens in my city is my business.” He resumed his circling. “Especially when it involves the Caldwells.”
“Then take it up with them. I’m not a Caldwell. I was almost a Caldwell, but that ship has clearly sailed.”
“Has it?” He stopped again, directly behind me this time. I could feel his presence, a physical weight pressing against my back. “Let me tell you what I know about your almost husband.”
His voice dropped lower. More intimate. Like he was sharing a secret.
“Logan Caldwell owes me two million dollars. Gambling debts. He’s been losing money at my tables for years, but it got worse about eighteen months ago. Much worse.”
Eighteen months. The same amount of time he’d been sleeping with my sister.