Page 183 of Corrupting Camille
Javi swallows tightly, aware he’s stepping onto thin ice. “Timestamps date back weeks. Earliest ones started right after Mateo.”
Mateo.
Nineteen. Barely more than a fucking kid. Innocent. His body carved, butchered, and left displayed by Torres, a message, bold and blood-soaked, delivered directly to me. Torres and Ramos paid their debts in blood, bones, and screams that linger in nightmares even now. Yet the tangled, poisonous legacy they left behind still tightens around my throat, like rusted wire twisting tighter with every breath.
My fingers trace the photographs again, deliberate. Camille unaware, defenseless, fucking exposed. Her guarded smiles, her soft laughter captured by the cold, invasive eye of a predator. Fury coils inside me, threading deeper, darker, settling with lethal precision. My knuckles throb, ached by the brutal restraint it takes not to shatter bone, rip flesh, destroy someone. Right fucking now.
Javi clears his throat, voice tight, clipped, trying to mask nerves he knows better than to show. “Whoever took these had deep access. Files were encrypted, buried deep inside Ramos’s old servers. Left there intentionally, like a time bomb, waiting.”
“They wanted us to know,” Diego growls, voice raw and weighted.
“No,” I counter softly, deadly calm threading every syllable. “They wanted me to know.”
I let my gaze lift slowly, pinning each man briefly before it lands hard on Joaquin. “The last photo?”
Joaquin’s jaw twitches, his gaze flicking to Javi, who nods grimly, permission granted. Joaquin swallows, voice low and tense. “Haven House. Two nights ago. She was alone. Unaware. And the angle…” He pauses, carefully, like he’s stepping around tripwires. “The photographer was close, jefe. Real fucking close.”
It hits like a blade in my chest, cold, sharp, precise.
Camille at Haven House, her sanctuary. The one fucking place she believes is safe, sacred, protected from monsters like me. Monsters like the ones hunting her now.
Vulnerable. Exposed. Threatened.
Slowly, deliberately, I gather each photo, hiding her laughter, her fragile moments, beneath my palm, slipping them back into the folder one by one, a ritual of control over chaos.
Then I stand. My chair scrapes, the sound cutting like steel. Every man stiffens instantly, straightening like soldiers bracing for war.
“If someone’s bold enough to trail Camille, photograph her, and leave a fucking calling card…” My voice dips, icy quiet, dripping venom, “…they think they’ve found leverage. They think they’ve found my weakness.”
The silence thickens, heavy, charged.
I lean forward, palms pressed flat against polished wood, muscles coiled with carefully measured violence. “But Camille isn’t my weakness. She’s their fucking death sentence.”
I straighten again, rage distilled into ruthless clarity.
“Double every perimeter. Guards at every entrance, cameras in every shadow. No one steps onto this property without mysay. Joaquin, send a team, discreetly to watch Sinclair’s estate. Diego, find out who’s still breathing from Ramos’s old crew who had access to intel like this. Javi, rip apart every byte of their digital footprint, photographs, IPs, whispers. I want names by sundown.”
“Si, jefe.” Voices echo sharply. Clear. Ready.
I lift the folder, Camille’s vulnerability captured in paper-thin snapshots. My voice drops dangerously low, each word edged like a freshly sharpened blade. “And no one breathes a fucking word of this to her. Not yet.”
I let the threat linger, a promise of pain twisting silently in the air.
“Whoever’s behind this will learn exactly how slowly a man can beg for death.”
They nod grimly. They’ve seen me ruthless. Seen me merciless.
But this?
They’ve never seen me kill for love.
They fucking will now.
The men leave swiftly, leaving silence heavy enough to choke on. Only when the door clicks shut behind them do I let out one raw, tightly controlled breath.
Slowly, deliberately, I open the folder again, my fingers brushing Camille’s photograph. Her bright, easy laugh frozen in time, caught unaware, glowing softly like moonlight on water. Innocent. Carefree.
And hunted.
