Page 77 of Corrupting Camille
“This is clean,” I say, voice dead calm. The kind of calm that gets people killed. “Too clean.”
“They wiped it,” he replies. “The whole incident. It’s like it never happened. Medical records, trip logs, even payroll. Anyone connected to that night’s either been bought off or buried so deep they’re untouchable.”
“Nothing is untouchable,” I snarl. “Not with the right kind of pressure.”
“I’ve already got feelers out. Black card stuff. Former staff. Quiet money. Might take time.”
“I’ll give you time,” I say, “but not too much. I want his name, Joaquin. And I want the address where I can make him wish he never fucking existed.”
Silence crackles down the line. Then:
“You got it.”
I hang up.
The city glows outside my floor-to-ceiling windows, all steel and glitter and delusion. I stare out at it, shirtless, half-drunk on fury, soaked in vengeance.
She was ten.
And they left her…
To bury it.
To perform on cue. To smile and wave and be “the Sinclair daughter” while her skin remembered the hands of a man who should be a fucking corpse. Will be very soon.
***
I hear her whisper, raw and shaking, still echoing in my skull.
My father had a friend….
He hurt me…
I told him I’d tell…
He pushed me over the side of our yacht…
I can’t unhear it. Can’t unsee her kneeling on the floor of that rec room, offering her pain like it was a gift, quiet, trembling truth meant for someone else, not for me. But I took it anyway. Branded it into my bones.
I haven’t moved in hours.
The bourbon’s gone. The glass is warm from how long I’ve been holding it.
And then my phone buzzes.
I stare down at the screen.
Javi – Miami.
My jaw tightens. I set the glass down, the ice clinking softly like a countdown clock.
It’s never good news when Javi calls me after midnight.
I answer, voice tight. “Talk.”
“It’s bad,” he says, clipped, urgency threading his words.
Fuck.
