Page 277 of Corrupting Camille

“I usually am.” She threads her fingers gently through mine, squeezing tight.

We sit quietly for a long, aching moment. The world feels suspended, poised on the edge of something I can’t name. And deep down, I know we might survive the war.

I don’t know who Kane will be when he walks back through those doors. I don’t know how much of him will return, or how much of him he’ll have abandoned to the flames and the shadows.

But I’ll still be here waiting. Holding onto our child, holding onto what’s left of our shattered family, holding onto the hope that the man who comes home is still mine, still ours, no matter how broken or bloodstained.

***

The first sign he’s back isn’t headlights or footsteps, it’s the shift in the air, a sudden heavy silence that tightens the walls around me. I feel him before the gravel crunches under tires, before Javi appears in the doorway, comms dangling loose, mouth set in a grim, unreadable line.

I’m already at the door, heartbeat roaring in my ears, hands clenched into fists at my sides. Lena steps up quietly behind me, voice careful and soft. “Do you want me to…?”

“No.” I don’t look back, eyes locked on the shadowed drive, the night whispering warnings I don’t want to hear. “I need to face this alone.”

When the doors finally open, he’s there, standing framed by darkness and moonlight, every inch the monster everyone fears.

Oh, God.

He’s covered in blood. It stains his shirt, soaking deep and dark into the fabric, slicking down his knuckles, smearing across his jaw. Some is dry, some fresh and vivid, still gleaming beneath the dim light. His hair is wild, eyes hollow, a depthless black I almost don’t recognize.

He walks toward me, each step heavy, measured, like he doesn’t feel the weight of what he’s done, what he’s lost.

But I don’t hesitate.

I run to him, throwing myself against his chest, arms wrapping tight around his waist. He smells like blood and ash and death, so raw, so real, but I hold on anyway, burying myself in him, desperate to feel his heartbeat.

For a moment, he’s still, utterly frozen.

Then his arms come around me, so tight and fierce it feels like he’s drowning and I’m the only anchor keeping him from sinking forever.

“Kane,” I whisper into his chest, fingers digging into the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt, holding him like I’ll never let go. “You came back. You’re here.”

His voice is hollow, barely more than a ghost’s. “I burned them. Every single one.”

My heart stutters, grief and relief tangling inside my chest. “All of them?”

He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, the depth of his pain etched starkly into every harsh line of his face. “Yes.”

I reach up slowly, fingers gentle as they trace dried blood on his temple. “What did it cost you?”

He swallows hard, throat working roughly. His voice is shredded, agonized. “Too fucking much.”

Kane

I stand in the only place that still feels right…her arms.

Everything else around me is ruin and smoke.

The men I hunted tonight died begging. Not for mercy, not for their lives, but for understanding. They died knowing why I had come: for Camille. For our child. For the part of myself they could never touch, never tarnish.

I erased them all. Burned warehouses, dismantled networks, dragged their leaders from hiding places, and cut them down like weeds. I left a message in blood and fire across every corner of this godforsaken city: Touch her again, and I’ll annihilate your entire world.

But it doesn’t soothe the ache. It doesn’t fill the hollow emptiness carving out my chest.

Her hands gently cradle my face, grounding me, pulling me back from the void. Camille’s eyes are glassy with tears she refuses to shed, fierce and unwavering as she searches mine.

“I need you to come back now,” she whispers urgently. “I need the man…not the monster, not the ghost. You.”