Chapter 22
POV: Camille?
Monday morning came like a guillotine.
The text still glowed on my phone when my alarm blared at 5:45 am.
Michael: My office. Monday. 7 AM. Don’t be late.
The command tone, typical Michael Vanderbilt.
There was no please, no explanation, just orders, always demands. And he probably thought he had me.
I lay in bed staring at the message, torn between throwing the phone across the room and throwing myself at him just to feel that ache again.
But one thing was certain—I wasn’t going to run anymore.
Not today.
When I arrived on his floor, the place was practically deserted, it was too early for the buzz of associates or work even in general. All I could hear is my heart practically going to tear out of my chest.
Michael’s office door was ajar, light spilling into the hallway like a spotlight on my doom. I pushed it open surprisingly and I stepped inside, giving myself an internal pep talk as I did.
You got this, Camille. You’ve seen him for who he is, actually, behind the suit, behind the smoldering gaze, beyond the careful tone.
He was there, of course as he always was. He was leaning against his desk in a perfectly tailored dark grey suit, black tie still loose on his neck, as if he hadn’t gone home at all.
His eyes tracked me immediately the second I entered. “Close the door, Camille.”
Just four words.
I obeyed, though my pulse screamed at me to keep an escape route open.
“You wanted to see me,” I said, folding my arms against my chest.
“Yes.” He gestured to the chair across from his desk, directing me where to sit as if I was still his to command, and I guess I was, even though I was adamantly trying to deny it. “Sit, Camille.”
There it was—the way he said my name. It made my skin prickle.
I didn’t move. I didn’t obey him. “Say what you need to say, Michael. I don’t have time for games.”
His lips twitched, but not in amusement. “Very well. I’ll give it to you straight. There’s something you need to know.”
That tone—calm, deliberate, the one he used in depositions when he was about to destroy someone—made my stomach drop.
“What is it?”
And for some reason I thought that this had nothing to do with our relationship.
Yet, again.
He hesitated, then he slid a folder across the desk toward me.
I stared at it, reluctant to touch it. “What’s this?”
“Background on a merger we’re negotiating,” he said smoothly. “But more importantly, it contains details about me that were omitted from your understanding when you signed the contract and when you joined the company.”
My skin prickled. “Omitted?”
“Yes.”
I opened the folder, flipping through the pages—financial records, newspaper clippings, court filings. My eyes scanned faster, heart pounding harder with every line.
And then I saw it.
Michael’s name next to a company that had been embroiled in a massive fraud investigation.
My throat went dry. “This…this was you?”
His gaze didn’t waver. “I was on the board but I stepped down before the investigation concluded.”
I shook my head, disbelief flooding me. “You hid this from me. Do you have any idea what it means if this leaks—to the company? If the board finds out? If clients find out? If other employees find out?”
His jaw tightened. “It won’t leak.”
“You don’t know that!” My voice rose, echoing against the glass walls.
“You put me in the middle of this, Michael, and not just professionally but personally. Because who knows if one day, I’ll be outed for whatever this thing is where doing here—for this contract! You put all of us at risk, and for what—to protect your goddamn image?”
He pushed off the desk, taking a step closer to me. “I protected this business. I protected myself. And yes, I protected you too from it.”
I laughed. “Protected me? Are you kidding? You used me! And you have been from the start!”
His eyes burned into mine, stormy and unflinching. “Do you think I wanted you involved in this?”
“I don’t know what you want—half the time I don’t even know if were talking about business or this fucked up contract!”
And I didn’t stop there. “That’s the problem, Michael. One day you tell me I’m yours, that this is real, and the next you hide behind the contract and now this?”
I shoved the folder against his chest in anger.
“Camille,” he said, quieter now. “It wasn’t supposed to go this far. Nothing ever was.”
My throat burned. “What, me? Us? Or your lies?”
He dragged a hand through his hair, the mask slipping again from place. “All of it.”
I blinked, stunned. “You mean that? You really regret all of it?”
I felt like we were getting nowhere.
He stepped closer, so close that I could feel the heat of him. “I regret letting you see me like this—weak and human. But I don’t regret you.”
The contradiction made me dizzy.
My anger warred with the ache in my chest and the part of me that wanted to believe him even as my brain screamed not to.
“Then why hide this? “Why not tell me? Why not trust me, Michael?”
His jaw clenched. “Because trust is a liability. And you…” His hand lifted as if to touch me, then fell to his side instead. “You make me reckless. I don’t know what else you want me to say, Camille.”
The admission stole my breath.
“You’re afraid,” I told him. “You’re afraid, and you called me here because I’ve been ignoring you, just to stir up something else, in order to keep me hanging on.”
His eyes flicked up, sharp. “Yes.”
It was the first time he’d ever admitted it.
“And so am I, Michael. I’m afraid of losing myself in you. I’m afraid of giving up everything I’ve worked for in life just to be another one of your mistakes. But maybe fear isn’t enough anymore.”
He exhaled loudly. “You don’t understand..”
“Then explain it to me!” I shouted, tears stinging in my eyes. “Explain why you keep tearing me down when you’re the one who said this is real. Explain why I should stay when all you do is hide!”
The silence that followed was excruciating.
Finally, he spoke, surprising us both. “Because if you walk away then I lose more than you’ll ever know.”
The words hung heavy between us.
I learned nothing from it but I felt everything at the same time.
And then, just as quickly, the mask slid back. Michael straightened his shoulders. “But that’s your choice, Camille, stay, or go, just remember that walking away doesn’t erase the contract and it doesn’t erase us.” Then he moved past me, leaving me standing in the middle of his office. Again.
I sank into the chair across from his desk staring back at the open folder of secrets.
I felt used and betrayed.
And yet, beneath it all, I felt something worse.
I still wanted him, even after everything.
And that realization was its own kind of betrayal.