Chapter 18 Eighteen
CAMILLA
The heavy oak door clicked shut. The lock engaged with a sharp, final snap.
I stood completely frozen in the center of the living room. The cold marble floor chilled my bare feet, but I barely felt it. The sweet, caring expression I wore for Thane completely melted off my face. It dripped away, leaving nothing behind but a black, oily, suffocating hate.
My hands shook violently at my sides. I crossed my arms tightly over my chest, digging my nails into my own skin.
I knew it.
I knew the absolute truth. Idalia was alive.
The weak, pathetic sister I despised had returned to this city, and she brought an army of wealth and arrogance with her. I squeezed my eyes shut. I remembered the night five years ago. I remembered the heavy, satisfying sound of the hitman’s voice on the phone. He told us she was gone. He said the car burned. He said she went into the deep, freezing water. He lied.
I opened my eyes and looked at my reflection in the dark glass of the living room window. I did not see a wealthy socialite. I saw pure, animal panic. I saw the desperate fear shining clearly in my own dark eyes. I was losing my grip on the Devereux fortune. I was losing my grip on the billionaire I spent five years manipulating. I can feel the money slipping through my fingers like dry sand. Thane did not even want to touch me. He looked at me with cold, dead eyes. He was already thinking about her.
I uncrossed my arms, marched across the living room and grabbed my cell phone from the marble kitchen island. My hands were perfectly steady now. The fear was gone. It was replaced by a vicious need to survive.
I scrolled through my contacts and tapped the name Kimberly Devereux.
She answered on the second ring. "Camilla, darling. It is late."
I took a deep breath. I summoned the fake tears. I let my voice crack perfectly.
"Kimberly," I cried softly into the phone. I made sure I sounded incredibly small and heartbroken. "I am so sorry to call you so late. I just... I do not know what to do. I am terrified."
"What is wrong?" Kimberly asked. Her voice sharpened immediately. The protective, arrogant mother instantly took over. "Is it Thane?"
"He is acting so strange," I sniffled. I wiped a completely dry eye. "It is the new doctor. Dr. Solene. She is doing something to him, Kimberly. She is manipulating him. She is making him distant and cold. She is incredibly dangerous. She is completely unprofessional. She insulted you, and now she is trying to ruin my relationship."
The silence on the line was heavy. I could hear Kimberly’s breathing turn fast and angry. I had thrown the perfect bait.
"That vicious girl," Kimberly hissed. Her voice was dripping with pure venom. "I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my room. She is a foreign upstart trying to claw her way into our world. She thinks she can control my son."
"I am so scared of her, Kimberly," I whispered.
"Do not cry, Camilla," Kimberly commanded. Her tone was sharp and absolute. "You are the future Mrs. Devereux. You do not cower to the hired help. I will deal with this doctor. I have powerful friends on the hospital board. I will put Thane back on the right path, and I will personally see to it that this woman is ruined."
"Thank you," I said softly. "You are the only mother I can truly rely on."
I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the red button to end the call.
I was not crying anymore. The fake sadness was entirely gone. I stared at the dark screen of my phone. A look of pure, unadulterated malice stretched tightly across my face. I looked over at the heavy oak desk near the window. A framed photograph of Thane sat on the wood. He looked powerful. He looked like a king.
I walked over to the photograph. I picked it up. I traced the glass over his face with my index finger. My blood boiled with dark, venomous intent.
"I will not let her take you," I whispered to the empty room. My voice was a dark, hissing snake in the quiet penthouse. "If your mother cannot get rid of her... I will kill Idalia myself."
THANE
I lay flat on the hard black leather of the bench. The heavy, industrial air conditioning unit above me hummed loudly, but I was burning up. The private Manhattan gym smelled like raw rubber, iron dust, and cold sweat.
The exposed brick walls boxed me in.
I reached up. I wrapped my large hands around the thick, cold steel of the barbell. The rough diamond knurling bit deeply into the heavy calluses on my palms. I squeezed the bar until my knuckles turned completely white.
Four hundred pounds. It was a massive amount of weight. It was dangerous. But I wanted the danger. I needed the sheer, crushing physical pain to drown out the loud noise inside my head.
I un-racked the bar. The heavy steel plates clanked together with a loud, sharp metallic crack. I lowered the bar slowly. The cold iron descended toward my chest. The thick tendons in my shoulders pulled tight. The heavy muscles in my chest stretched to their absolute limit. I felt a deep, burning fire tearing through my muscle fibers. I stopped the bar exactly one inch above my sternum and held it there, letting the burning pain take over.
I pushed. My arms shook violently. The thick veins in my neck bulged against my skin. I forced the heavy iron back up to the top and locked my elbows.
I did it again. Down. Hold. Push.
I wanted to crush the image burning behind my eyelids. I saw the small, dark mole on the pale skin of Dr. Lia Solene’s neck. I saw the arrogant, unyielding tilt of her chin. I saw the four-year-old boy. I saw his piercing, icy blue eyes staring directly up at me. My eyes.
“Am I losing it?” I asked myself. :Why do I see a dead woman in every single shadow?”
"One more," Jaxson Sterling said.
He stood directly behind the bench. His hands hovered over the bar, ready to catch the weight if my arms gave out.
I brought the bar down for the final rep. My arms felt like dead lead. The iron felt twice as heavy as before. I pushed. The bar moved halfway up and stopped. My chest muscles screamed. The fire in my shoulders turned into pure, tearing agony.
I bared my teeth. I let out a low, rough grunt from the bottom of my chest as I drove my heavy boots into the rubber floor mat. I forced the bar up, inch by agonizing inch, until my elbows locked out completely.
Jaxson grabbed the bar. He helped me guide it back onto the heavy steel rack. It hit the metal hooks with a deafening, echoing clang.
I sat up. My chest heaved violently.
Thick drops of hot sweat rolled down my face and dripped onto the black rubber floor. I grabbed a white towel and wiped the sweat from my eyes and looked up at Jaxson. I was breathless.
"Tell me you found something, Jax," I panted. "Anything."
Jaxson looked down at me. His face was completely grim. He crossed his arms over his chest.
"The records are gone, Thane," Jaxson said. His voice was flat and hard. "It is like someone took a massive vacuum to the hospital’s entire history."
I threw the white towel onto the bench and stood up. My chest was still rising and falling heavily.
"That is impossible," I said. "Hospitals do not just lose two years of digital logs. They have physical backups. They have off-site servers."
"They do lose them if they are paid enough money," Jaxson countered. He did not blink. "I dug into the specific dates. The two years you were blind and admitted to that private wing. The security footage? Completely wiped. A total digital scrub. The specific nurses who worked your floor? I tracked them. Three took early retirement. Two moved out of the country entirely. Someone cleaned the house, Thane. And they cleaned it thoroughly."
The air in the gym suddenly felt freezing cold.
The sweat chilled on my skin. What?
I stared at the exposed brick wall. A cold, hard realization hit my brain like a physical punch to the jaw. This was not a coincidence. This was not a computer error. This was a massive, expensive conspiracy.
If Idalia Vance was just a fraud, why would someone go to these extreme lengths to erase her? If she was just a gold-digging sister who tried to steal Camilla’s place, why burn the hospital records? Why pay off the nurses to leave the country?
You do not erase a fraud. You erase a victim.
I got a call from my mother to meet up that evening. The weather was brutal. A freezing, bitter wind whipped aggressively down the long avenue. The heavy gray clouds hung very low over the towering skyscrapers. The streetlights flickered against the dark, heavy sky.
And the violent, freezing weather perfectly matched the absolute chaos raging inside my head.
My driver took me to an exclusive, white-tablecloth restaurant in Midtown. It was the kind of place where the city's wealthy elite came to hide. The large room was brightly lit. The air was filled with the soft clink of heavy silver forks against expensive porcelain plates. The low, quiet murmur of wealthy conversations hovered over the tables.
I found my mother sitting at a private corner booth.
Kimberly Devereux looked absolutely perfect. She wore a tailored navy suit and heavy pearl earrings. Her hair was styled immaculately. But her face was pinched tight. Her sharp, dark eyes were filled with pure venom. She held a silver fork. She was picking at a green salad she had absolutely no intention of eating.
I sat down across from her, not taking off my dark overcoat. Being around her always felt like wearing a tight, choking collar.
"You are making a massive fool of yourself, Thane," Kimberly said. She did not say hello. She did not ask how my morning went. She went straight for the throat. "People in our circle are talking. They are talking about your erratic behavior toward that arrogant new surgeon."
I looked at her face. I studied the tight lines around her mouth. I wondered exactly how much she knew about the missing hospital records. I wondered if she was the one who paid the nurses to disappear.
A hot surge of dark rebellion hit the back of my throat. I wanted to slam my large hands on the table and demand the absolute truth. But I kept my face blank. I kept my heavy Boss mask firmly in place.
"I am making sure the woman cutting into your heart is exactly who she says she is, Mother," I replied. My voice was calm, low, and perfectly steady.
Kimberly dropped her silver fork onto her plate. It clattered loudly against the porcelain.
"She is a doctor," Kimberly snapped. She leaned her upper body forward over the table. "That is all she is. An employee. You are completely neglecting Camilla. The poor girl is an absolute wreck because of your sudden distance. She feels like you are pushing her away."
I stared at my mother. I felt absolutely nothing for her anger, and I felt nothing for Camilla's complaints.
"You will go home tonight," Kimberly commanded. She pointed a sharp, manicured finger directly at my chest. "And you will apologize to your fiancée. You will stop this ridiculous obsession with a hospital worker. Do you understand me, Thane?"