Mag-log in~ CamillaFor a long moment after he kissed me, that impossibly soft, gentle kiss that felt like it belonged in another universe, I just lay there staring at the ceiling while he drifted back to sleep beside me.And my mind… my mind did the worst possible thing it could do.It began to hope.God, the betrayal of it. I could feel it rising like warm, golden smoke inside my chest, that stupid flutter that said maybe, maybe, maybe he was changing. Maybe the rescue, the fear of losing me, the sleepless nights… maybe something in him cracked open. Maybe there was a heart tangled somewhere inside all the power and coldness of his heart. Maybe he could be different with me. Softer. Better. And the moment that thought formed, the moment I felt the first spark of warmth, another part of me, the part he had scorched over and over again, slammed the brakes so hard my breath nearly punched out of me.Stop it, Camilla. Snap out of it.You know exactly what this is. You’ve played this game before, a
~ Camilla Two days.Forty-eight hours.It’s strange how a stretch of time so small can feel like a lifetime, or a hallucination, or a hole you stumble into and suddenly don’t know how to crawl out of. The outside world felt unreal now, like something happening underwater. The firm, Alex, Isabella, the police reports, the godawful minutes… all of it had been swallowed by this enclosed space, this penthouse that felt more like a very elegant cage than a home. Some things were exactly as they had always been. The cold, quiet aura of this room. The perfection of the sheets, the scent of expensive colognes, the architectural arrogance of the furniture. And me, I was still pregnant, still the woman who somehow managed to fall between his moods like a coin tossed into a storm drain.But Stephano… Stephano wasn’t the same. And dear lord help me, that was more terrifying than any cruelty he had shown me before.The last two nights had been a maze, and not the kind you find in children’s book
I saw the car before Lydia even finished her sentence. A black sedan pulled up at the mouth of the driveway, rolling in too slowly for my liking. The headlights cut across the front lawn and I felt something inside me snap into a razor point.Alex.And Camilla.He had the audacity to bring her here like this. The audacity to breathe in my city after touching her. My grip on the door handle tightened until I nearly tore it off as I got out of the car.Lydia opened her door slower, calling after me, “Stephano. Slow down. Slow down.”I did not hear her. My blood was pounding in my ears. My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. The entire world narrowed into one single target. Alex stepped out of the driver’s side, shaky, pale as paper. Camilla climbed out on the passenger’s side. Her legs wobbled. Her eyes looked glassy. She looked terrified and too fragile and too damn small.The sight of her made something in my chest implode.I moved. Power walked straight toward them. Lydia kep
CHAPTER 104~ Stephano My phone buzzed on the console and I did not bother to look at the caller ID. I picked it up on the first ring. I was expecting one of my men. A lead. A location. A direction. Instead, the voice that spilled into my ear was shaking. Stuttering. It crawled with guilt.Alex.I sat up straighter in the backseat. A slow, cold heat crawled down my spine. I did not raise my voice at first. I kept it very low.“Where,” I said, “the hell is my woman?”I saw Lydia’s head snap toward me, her eyes widening a fraction. She looked almost entertained. Alex inhaled sharply on the other end. He sounded like he was running. Or crying. Or both.“Stephano… listen…”I cut him off immediately.“Alex, if this is the part where you demand a ransom, I swear to God, I will rip your head off with my bare hands. I will take it off your shoulders and I will feed it to the dogs. Where the fuck is Camilla.”Lydia was staring at me now. Not blinking. Her brows slowly lifting like she was wat
CHAPTER 103~ AlexMaybe this was a terrible idea.I leaned back against the cold wall of the storage room, trying to calm my racing thoughts. My hands trembled slightly, which I hated. I hated that I was trembling. That I was second-guessing everything we had done. The fluorescent light flickered above, casting shadows across Isabella’s face as she lounged in a corner chair like she owned the place. Her legs crossed, heels clicking lightly against the floor as she sipped her drink, every movement dripping with the kind of spoiled arrogance that made my skin crawl and my blood boil at the same time.I ran a hand over my face and muttered under my breath, “Maybe… maybe we should just let her go.” The words sounded weak even to me, but I couldn’t stop them from slipping out. “You know? Maybe we shouldn’t do this. We could just let her go. I mean, she would probably forgive us. Camilla… she’s… she’s reasonable. She would probably forgive us.”Isabella raised one eyebrow, the corner of he
Lydia was still pacing my living room like she was the CEO of my life and I was an intern she was disappointed in. Her heels clicked like a clock counting down to my humiliation.“Stephano,” she sighed for the fifteenth time, “I swear, if this blows up tomorrow, I’m the one who will have to deal with the PR nightmare. Do you even understand how messy this is?”“Lydia,” I said slowly, “if I hear the words ‘nightmare’ or ‘messy’ one more time, I’m throwing you out.”She didn’t flinch. “Then who will clean up your disaster? Certainly not you.”I inhaled sharply. “You’re unbelievably irritating.”“And you’re unbelievably reckless,” she snapped. “Where did you even think she’d go? And you just left her unsupervised…”“I didn’t think she’d run,” I bit out.“You never think!” she shot back. “You assume people orbit you! Like, what did you think, Stephano? That she would just stay wherever you put her like a purse? She’s pregnant, hormonal, scared.”I raised a hand. “Spare me the sentimental







