Page 273 of Corrupting Camille

Blood slicks my palms. Rage turns my vision red at the edges.

I slam open the steel doors of the war room. Javi and Joaquin are already there, faces set like stone, grim and waiting, their expressions confirming what I already know: this means war.

Maps glow ominously, satellite images flickering overhead, infrared tracking heat signatures like deadly ghosts across a screen. They both turn toward me, prepared for orders, knowing better than to question.

“I want names,” I demand, voice edged in broken glass and steel. “Every single bastard connected to the men who set foot here tonight. Every fucking one.”

Javi’s fingers fly instantly over the keys, fierce determination in each keystroke. “On it.”

“Start with every last Reyes associate who’s still breathing,” I bite out sharply. “Then bleed the Serbian line dry. Drag out every Eastern Bloc connection they have, cut every pipeline they’ve built.”

Joaquin’s voice is cold, quiet, deadly. “They won’t survive the night.”

I lock eyes with him, unflinching. “They shouldn’t survive the fucking hour.”

The screens blur, faces, numbers, locations, targets, all morphing into a single, ruthless goal:

Annihilation. Absolute and merciless.

When I’m done, even their ashes won’t remain.

I grip the edge of the table, knuckles white, Diego’s blood flaking beneath my fingernails, staining my skin. For a heartbeat, silence crushes the room, heavy and suffocating.

Then I raise my eyes slowly, meeting Javi’s hard stare. “Send someone for Diego’s body. He doesn’t stay here.”

“Where to?”

“Colombia.” My throat closes around the word, grief slicing sharp and savage. “Bury him next to our father. Give him the respect he fucking earned.”

Javi nods, jaw clenched tight. “And Rosa? Lucia?”

“I’ll guard them myself,” I growl, each word bitten out like a vow. “Every goddamn second until this ends.”

Camille’s face flashes vividly in my mind, tear-streaked, terrified, pleading my name, desperately trying to hold me back from the cliff I’ve balanced on my entire life.

But tonight, I’m done balancing.

Tonight, I’m diving headfirst into the darkness.

Camille

The house feels wrong.

Too quiet. Too heavy. The silence swallows every sound, muffling even our shallow breaths. It shouldn’t feel empty, there are too many people for that. Too many guards pacing restlessly at every door, every window, shadows armed to the teeth. And Diego’s family, his shattered heart, spread out through the compound like pieces scattered in grief.

I sit with Rosa and Lucia, hours passing in slow agony. Three bodies pressed close, linked only by numb hands and unspoken devastation. Lucia hasn’t spoken since they took her father away. She stays curled into Rosa’s side, eyes blank, unfocused. Every now and then, her small frame shudders violently, tremors she can’t control. Rosa’s face is stone, tears dried on her cheeks, eyes staring blindly at nothing.

Marisol and Reina drift like ghosts through the hallways, holding onto each other like lifelines, their faces haunted, broken. Sisters who’ve lost their protector, their anchor. Reina’s whispered prayers bleed softly into Marisol’s quiet, choking sobs, the sound heartbreakingly raw.

None of us can say it yet.

Not out loud.

Not Diego.

Not dead.

Not gone.