Chapter 7: What She Actually Wanted
"In the beginning," Declan repeated.
"Sit down." Her voice was not soft, but it was not cruel either.
It was the voice she used when she had made a decision and was prepared to defend it.
"Please."
He sat.
Camille looked at the chart table for a moment.
Then she looked at him.
"You built a fortress," she said.
"You are very proud of your fortress.
The bulletproof glass.
The reinforced doors.
The perimeter team." She paused.
"You never asked whether the person inside wanted to be there."
"You could have left."
"I tried." Her jaw tightened.
"Twice.
You found me both times within forty-eight hours.
You didn't threaten me.
You didn't raise your voice.
You sat across from me in whatever room I had run to and you explained, very calmly, why leaving was not possible.
Why the people who wanted to hurt you would use me to do it.
Why the only safe place for me was inside the fortress." She looked at him steadily.
"You were very convincing.
You always were."
"I was trying to protect you."
"I know." She said it without anger.
"I believe that.
I believed it for a long time." She unfolded her hands and pressed them flat on the table.
"But there is a point at which protection and imprisonment feel identical from the inside.
And I reached that point."
Declan said nothing.
"I went to Marcus because I had no one else," she continued.
"I had no family you hadn't absorbed into your orbit.
I had no friends who weren't connected to your world.
I had no money that wasn't in accounts you controlled.
I had nothing except information — things I had seen and heard in twelve years of living inside your operation." Her voice was even.
"I used what I had."
"You used Marcus's men as collateral damage."
Her eyes didn't flinch.
"Yes."
"Three of them are d*ad."
"I know." A pause.
"That is the part I cannot make right.
I have thought about it every day for two years." She looked down at her hands.
"I told Marcus to use a small charge.
Enough to destroy the car.
Enough to make the injuries look catastrophic without actually being catastrophic.
I had Dr.
Aris ready.
I had the medical cover planned to the hour." She looked up.
"Something went wrong with the charge.
It was bigger than it was supposed to be.
The car went further than it was supposed to go." Her voice dropped slightly.
"I spent three days in a real hospital before the cover was in place.
The first two days I wasn't performing anything."
The engine hummed.
Water moved against the hull.
"The money," Declan said.
"Is mine.
Half of it was mine before we married.
You absorbed it the same way you absorbed everything else.
The rest — I moved it over fourteen months because I needed enough to disappear properly.
To stay disappeared." She looked at the laptop.
"I wasn't trying to ruin you financially.
I took what I needed.
What was left is still more than most people see in ten lifetimes."
"And Aris."
"Aris has been my doctor, not yours, for two years.
He kept the cover in place because I paid him and because he believed I had a right to leave." A pause.
"He's a good man who made a bad choice for what he thought were good reasons."
Declan looked at her for a long moment.
"Dr.
Solís," he said.
"The second name on the manifest."
Camille's expression shifted — just slightly.
"My daughter's doctor."
The cabin went very still.
"Your daughter," Declan said.
Camille reached into the envelope and placed a photograph on the table between them.
A child.
Dark hair.
Perhaps eighteen months old.
Asleep in a hospital crib, a small monitor clipped to one finger.
"Her name is Nora," Camille said.
"She was born eleven months ago.
She has a heart condition.
Dr.
Solís is her cardiologist." Her voice was steady but something beneath it was not.
"She has never been inside your fortress.
She will never be inside your fortress." She looked at him directly.
"She is the reason the timeline moved up."
Declan stared at the photograph.
"She's mine," Camille said quietly.
"Not yours.
I want to be very clear about that."
He looked up from the photograph.
"I'm not going to fight you for a child," he said.
Something in Camille's face shifted — the first unguarded thing he had seen from her since he walked through the cabin door.
"Then what are you going to do," she said.
His phone buzzed on the table between them.
Ronan's name on the screen.
May you like
He did not answer it.
"I don't know yet," he said.
