Page 107 of Corrupting Camille
My fingers clutch Preston’s hand, nails digging in hard. “We should move on.”
But before I can drag him away, my eyes snag, violently, unwillingly, on a face I never expected to see again.
Douglas Everhart.
His laugh hits me like a fist to the chest, heavy and bitterly familiar. The kind of laugh that buries itself in nightmares, the kind I haven’t heard in fifteen years but could still recognize blindfolded. He looks the same, same glittering arrogance, same contemptible pinky ring winking like mockery beneath the lights.
My throat constricts.
The room plunges into sudden silence, a vacuum where only my panic echoes.
I’m underwater again, black waves closing over my head, lungs screaming for air. I feel his palms, rough against my spine, pressing down, the yacht’s deck slick and cold beneath my fingertips. I hear the splash. Feel the bitter, choking taste of saltwater flooding my mouth.
My knees buckle slightly, betraying me.
He’s here.
Standing there, calm, smug, shaking hands, smiling like his hands aren’t stained with every ounce of innocence he ripped from my bones.
I stagger backward, breath stolen from me, colliding into Ivy.
Preston’s grip tightens painfully around my arm. “Camille?”
I can’t speak.
I can’t breathe.
The walls press closer, crushing my ribs, and Douglas’s face fills every inch of my vision, twisted and wrong and utterly oblivious to the carnage he’s left inside me.
“Camille?” Preston’s voice sharpens now, anxiety lacing through confusion. “What’s going on?”
My head jerks from side to side, mouth opening and closing uselessly. The words won’t come, they’re stuck deep in the place where screams live.
Then, Kane moves, stepping closer.
He says nothing. Doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t offer comfort.
But his presence crowds me anyway, heavy and invasive, oppressive heat bearing down, stripping away the last fragile shred of control.
He watches Douglas. Watches me. Eyes narrowing, calculating the distance between my panic and the monster who caused it. I can see it in the way his gaze sharpens, the way his jaw clenches in sudden, cold comprehension.
He knows.
God, he knows.
Without thinking, without breathing, I wrench my arm free from Preston and run, ignoring my mother’s outraged gasp, Clara’s stunned whisper, Charles’s angry shout. I shove blindly through faceless bodies.
I burst onto the terrace, air slicing into my lungs, cold and punishing.
My palms slam into the marble balustrade, lungs seizing, chest heaving, heartbeat thunderous. Douglas Everhart’s smile claws at my mind, his laughter a razor slicing deeper with every memory dredged from where I buried them. He’s the ghost of the girl I could’ve been, the silent, drowning child lost to deep waters and darker secrets.
Footsteps approach, slow, deliberate, relentless.
Not Preston. Not my sister’s gentle worry. Not even my mother’s brittle impatience.
Kane.
I shut my eyes tightly, bile burning the back of my throat, nausea twisting my gut into knots. Shame floods through me, hot and acidic, stripping my soul raw. I feel his stare, heavy and merciless, carving me open until every hidden wound bleeds openly.
