Page 44 of Corrupting Camille
“And I’ll still walk away richer.”
That’s the part he really hates. That if I bring it all down, I won’t lose.
He will.
“Your board will fold to pressure. Your donors will scatter. Your daughter’s picture will be plastered across every news cycle with the word fraud underneath it. And I won’t lift a finger because I already built the system that will devour her.”
I let that hang in the air, then lean in one last time.
“So be smart,” I murmur. “Save your daughter’s face. Save your company’s name. Give me what I want.”
Charles doesn’t answer.
But he doesn’t say no either.
And that?
That’s the first move of surrender.
I walk out without shaking his hand. Without looking back. I don’t need to see his face. I’ve already read it.
He’ll give me the board seat.
He’ll approve the oversight.
He’ll fold, just like every man who builds an empire without the stomach to protect it.
Camille won’t know yet. Not until the paperwork’s done. Not until I’m seated across the boardroom table, smiling at her like the wolf she forgot she let in the door.
And when she does?
It’ll already be too late.
Because I’m not just inside her Foundation now. I’m inside her bloodline. Her future. Her fucking fate.
And she’ll come to understand exactly what it means to be mine.
Strategically.
Publicly.
Irrevocably.
Day Nine.
I’m methodical.
Patient.
Ruthless.
Men like Charles Sinclair think ruthlessness is loud, explosive, something easily identified and guarded against. They’ve never encountered someone who bleeds into their world so subtly, so completely, that by the time they notice, the war is already lost.
Rivera Holdings quietly swallows another block of Sinclair Media stock. My lawyers draft the oversight paperwork, my analysts already map out the internal processes they’ll overhaul once Charles Sinclair bends the knee. Joaquin’s intelligence continues to drip-feed critical information about Charles’s closest advisors. His offshore interests. The nervous CFO who built the shell corporations bleeding Camille’s foundation dry.
At night, I don’t sleep.
At night, I pace the penthouse, the city skyline glittering through my windows. The lipstick mark Camille left on the bathroom mirror is untouched, my twisted shrine. A reminder she thought she could leave something behind and walk away clean.
