Page 114 of Corrupting Camille
The fury that coils through me isn’t loud or frantic. It’s ice-cold. “No contact yet. Protect her discreetly, hidden security, eyes she’ll never notice.”
“I’ll handle Douglas personally,” I say quietly, definitively. “Track him. Before the week’s out, he faces me.”
“And Camille?”
My grip tightens, veins threaded with violence beneath the skin. “She asked me to back off. She thinks this is just about vengeance.”
I glance toward my desk, at the grainy photo captured from Haven House’s footage, Camille broken, raw, stripped bare as she confesses to a child, unaware I was watching her shatter. Everhart ripped something from her, something irreplaceable. Something I’ll make him pay for a thousand times over.
“This isn’t vengeance. It’s about restitution."
Joaquin’s voice lowers slightly. “Everhart’s attending a private fundraiser this Friday. Black-tie event at the Manhattan Club. You’re already invited.”
Of course, I am.
Because the world keeps letting monsters into rooms built for the elite.
But this time?
This time, a bigger monster’s walking through that door.
I hang up, heart steady, breath calm.
I glance toward the photograph on my desk, the one I printed from Haven House’s security footage. Camille, eyes raw, haunted, her armor broken, unaware I was watching as she whispered her truth to a child because no adult had ever listened.
Everhart stole something from her that night, something she’ll never fully get back.
Now I’ll steal everything from him. Slowly. Painfully. Completely.
She begged me to leave it alone.
But I’m just getting started.
***
The hours from Wednesday to Friday bleed by like a slow wound.
Deliberate.
Relentless.
A quiet, torturous drip of anticipation, seconds melting into minutes that feel like razor wire drawn slowly through my veins. Everhart’s fall is quiet. Precise. Unavoidable. The whispers begin softly, hidden in back-page articles, slipped into hushed conversations. Questions creep through boardrooms like slow-spreading poison. Handshakes lose their warmth, smiles turn brittle.
But it’s still too subtle.
He still believes he’s untouchable, that power will shield him from consequence. I let him hold onto that illusion. Let him sink comfortably into the false security of denial.
Friday night rolls in beneath a bruised sky, Manhattan’s glitter dulled by the dark clouds gathering above. I stand at my penthouse window my reflection watches me from the glass, unreadable, unforgiving.
The suit is deliberate.
Tailored, immaculate, armor in midnight black.
Tonight, I am executioner.
My phone hums. Joaquin’s message flickers across the screen.
Everhart arrived. Manhattan Club. Alone.
