Page 108 of Corrupting Camille
“Leave me alone, Kane,” I whisper, voice splintered and shaking. I squeeze my eyes tighter, as if darkness could erase the knowledge burning behind his eyes. “Please.”
He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak right away, just lets the silence grow sharper, crueler, digging deeper until I tremble openly beneath its weight.
Then, finally, so softly I almost miss it, he breathes my name. “Camille.”
The way he says it hurts worse than any wound.
“I know,” he adds quietly, voice steady, pitiless, final.
My eyes snap open, locking onto his. “You don’t know anything.”
But his expression is granite-hard, unflinching, eyes dark with something dangerous beneath that carefully maintained composure.
He steps closer, cornering me, pressing me against the unforgiving stone. His voice lowers to a lethal whisper. “I heard you at Haven House. Every word you gave to that little girl.”
My lungs stop.
The world splinters apart beneath my feet.
“No,” I whisper, desperate denial clawing at my throat. “You didn’t…”
“I did.” His voice slices through me, unforgiving, each word a ruthless strike. “I stood there and listened as you poured yoursoul out to a stranger, because every single person who was supposed to protect you was too blind or too fucking selfish to care.” His voice dips lower, darker. “How long did you really think you could bury it?”
My eyes burn, shame and pain mingling like acid behind my eyelids. “Stop,” I choke, pushing weakly against his chest, but he doesn’t move. He steps closer instead, crowding me until the cold wall bites hard into my spine and the air thickens with unbearable tension.
“He hurt you.” His words land like blows, brutal and precise. “Douglas Everhart touched you, violated you, and threw you aside like garbage.”
A harsh, broken sob bursts from my throat, uncontainable and ugly, ripping open every fragile seam I’ve painstakingly stitched together. My knees buckle beneath me, strength dissolving instantly. But Kane’s grip is iron, fingers bruising on my upper arms.
“Don’t,” I beg, voice splintering into pieces. “Don’t say it. Please, Kane…”
But mercy is foreign to him. His eyes blaze, cutting straight through every trembling facade I cling to. “He threw you into the ocean. Left you sinking in the dark. Cold. Helpless. Alone.”
I shake my head violently, desperate to erase the images flashing brutally across my mind. “Please stop…”
“And your family let it happen,” he growls, his voice savage now, eyes blackening with rage. “Your parents, their fucking legacy, their image, their perfect goddamned lies, they buried it. Left you broken and terrified and never looked back. All those years, Camille, and no one ever said a goddamn word.”
I’m shaking uncontrollably, tears sliding hot and unstoppable down my face. “Stop,” I plead, utterly shattered, utterly helpless. “God…Just stop…”
But suddenly, something inside him shifts. That raw fury twists into something even darker, deeper: ownership. Possession. The stark, consuming need to claim every jagged piece of my soul.
“I won’t,” he whispers harshly, gripping my chin, forcing my shattered gaze to his. “Because it matters, Camille. You matter, even if you’ve convinced yourself otherwise.”
A bitter laugh escapes me, sharp and wounded. “You don’t care,” I whisper brokenly, voice trembling. “All you care about is control…power.”
His thumb strokes my cheek, an agonizing tenderness that burns deeper than cruelty ever could. “Maybe,” he murmurs, his voice raw, guttural. “Maybe I am every fucked-up thing you think I am. But I saw you at Haven House, exposed, bleeding, raw, and I can’t unsee it. I can’t forget it. I won’t let you pretend it didn’t happen.”
My breath rattles painfully, chest aching, lungs contracting until each inhale feels like razors. Tears spill freely, silent streams tracing years of hidden agony down my cheeks. Kane tracks each one, relentless, dissecting my pain as if he’s starving for it.
“Why?” My voice is barely audible, fractured and trembling. “Why do you care?"
He leans in, so close that his breath scorches my cheek, his voice a broken whisper. “Because you’re mine, Camille. Mine to see, mine to protect, mine to fucking tear apart if I have to. And no one…” His voice hardens, sharp as shattered glass, deadly and merciless, “…no one touches what belongs to me.”
A sob rips through my chest, splintering every hidden wound wide open. I push against him again, palms trembling uselessly, but he only holds me tighter, refusing to let me collapse. Forcing every buried nightmare, every scar I’ve desperately hidden, to spill over and drown me.
Footsteps sound behind him, hurried, panicked, Preston calling my name, distant, frantic, oblivious.
But Kane doesn’t look away. Doesn’t even flinch.
