CHAPTER 2
JASON
Camila was applying her lipstick in the mirror, and she had absolutely no idea what she was doing to me.
The ivory dress. The diamond necklace catching the last of the evening light. That particular way she leaned toward her reflection — focused, unhurried, completely unselfconscious — that had undone me from the very first moment I saw it.
Four years ago, I walked into an animal shelter with the singular goal of adopting a dog.
I had walked out having met the most genuinely innocent person I had ever encountered in my entire life.
Not naive — Camila was never naive. But innocent in the way that mattered.
Untouched by the kind of darkness that changes a person permanently.
She laughed without calculating how it looked.
She trusted without auditing the risk. She loved without keeping anything in reserve.
I had lost that quality so long ago I couldn’t remember what it had felt like to have it.
And yet here she was — mine, impossibly mine — humming softly to herself in the golden light of our anniversary stateroom.
Then, my phone buzzed on the dresser.
I looked at the screen.
It was from Scarlett.
Tonight’s fantasy — You’re a masked man. You will enter my stateroom, tie me up, and pound me rough. I will film it. Room 546. Come in five minutes. Your time starts now.
I read it twice. Set the phone face-down.
In the mirror, Camila uncapped her lipstick and leaned closer to her reflection, perfectly at ease, perfectly happy.
I straightened my tie, looked at myself in the mirror for one long moment. Then I looked at her — lied to her — and walked out of the door.