003: The Dark Between Streetlights

Camille's POV

"Leaving so soon?"

Olivia's voice floated down from the top of the stairs before I even had my hand fully around the door handle. I stopped, my palm flat against the frame, and didn't turn around.

She came down slow, one step at a time, wearing nothing but Kyrian's shirt, buttoned crooked, her hair still a mess from an hour ago. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. It never had, I realized now. I'd just never bothered to check.

"I'm always three steps ahead of you, Cami. Did you know that?" She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame in front of me, blocking it with her whole body. "You've been getting the perfect things your whole life without even trying. Perfect grades. Perfect family." Her eyes dragged over me, slow, deliberate, the way you'd size up something you were about to throw away. "Meanwhile I had to actually work for what I wanted. Do you know how many rooms I walked into where men looked straight past you and straight at me? You never even noticed. You were too busy being comfortable in that body of yours to realize nobody else was ever going to fight for you the way you thought they would."

"Move," I said. I didn't have the energy to look at her.

"Come on, don't be like that." She smiled wider, like this was a game we were still playing.

"Move, Olivia."

Her voice went cold in half a second, the warmth dropping out of it like a trapdoor. "Or what? You'll try to kill me too? Like you killed your own daughter?"

My grip tightened on the strap of my bag until my knuckles ached. "You're disgusting. You don't even have the decency to be ashamed of yourself."

She rolled her eyes, bored, like I'd said something predictable. Then she leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me.

"You want to know something funny? You never should've been able to get pregnant again after Nancy." Her smile curled. "I made sure of that. Every morning, for years, in your coffee — something small, something a lab test would never think to look for unless it was looking for exactly that. Just enough to keep your body from ever holding onto another baby." She let that sit, watching my face fall apart in real time. "And the DNA file? Clean as a whistle when I needed it dirty. Funny what money buys."

I couldn't speak. My mouth opened and nothing came out.

"So this baby you've got now," she went on, softer, crueler for it, "wasn't supposed to happen. I don't know how you slipped through, but I'm not going to let some accident undo everything I've built. You'd be smart to watch your back, Cami. Big girls fall hard when someone finally decides to push."

She laughed then, low and delighted with herself, and I wanted so badly to hit her that my arm actually rose an inch before I stopped it. There was nothing left to win by hitting her. I turned, pulled the door open myself, and walked out into the dark.

The street was empty and cold, streetlights buzzing overhead in long stretches of orange and shadow. I dragged my suitcase behind me like a second shadow, the wheels catching on cracks in the sidewalk, and I had nowhere in the world to point myself toward. No sister. No parents left to call. Olivia had made sure over the years that even my friends became her friends first.

There was no point telling Kyrian about this pregnancy either. He'd only say it was some other man's again, and this time I didn't even have the strength to argue.

Three men stepped out from between two parked cars, broad enough to fill the whole sidewalk.

"Going somewhere, Mrs. Voss?"

"It's Miss Lewis," I said automatically, hating myself a little for how fast the correction came, like some small part of me was still trying to survive the night with dignity intact.

"I'm in a hurry," I told them. "I have somewhere I need to be."

They laughed, unhurried, like men who already knew nobody was expecting me anywhere.

"Big girl like you, moving that fast? Didn't think you had it in you," one of them said, and the others laughed harder, like it was the funniest thing they'd heard all week.

"Did Olivia send you? Kyrian?" My voice cracked on his name.

"Doesn't matter who sent us," the tallest one said. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way, sweetheart. Your choice. Though I'll be honest, the easy way might take a minute — you're carrying a lot more than we planned for."

I pushed past him. I don't even know what I thought that would accomplish, except that some animal part of me refused to stand still and wait for whatever was coming.

A hand closed in my hair and yanked me backward. I hit the pavement hard, my palms tearing open on the concrete, and then the first kick landed against my ribs and knocked every bit of air out of me. I curled instinctively, arms wrapping around my stomach, and one of them laughed close to my ear.

"Boss doesn't want you dead. Just wants to make sure you lose the one thing that could actually hurt her."

A boot came down on my stomach and the world went white at the edges. I couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, tasted blood and gravel both. Somewhere above the ringing in my ears, tires screeched.

"Let her go. Now."

A woman's voice, sharp as a blade drawn fast.

"Mind your own business, fool," one of them shot back, not even looking up.

I heard the car door. Footsteps, unhurried, deliberate, heels striking pavement like a countdown. And then a silence that felt different from the silence before it — heavier, the kind that makes grown men go still without knowing exactly why.

I never saw her face. I only heard the three of them scatter, their footsteps swallowed by the dark so fast it was like they'd never been standing over me at all, one of them muttering something under his breath I couldn't quite catch, something that sounded like fear dressed up as respect.

Hands found me on the ground, gentle where everything else that night had been cruel. I was lifted into someone's arms, my head resting against a shoulder that smelled faintly of something expensive, something I couldn't name.

"I'm nobody," I whispered, blood thick in my mouth. "Why would you want to save someone like me?"

"Because," the voice said quietly, close to my ear, "I know a fighter when I see one lying in the street."

"Sleep now," she murmured. "When you wake up, I'm going to help you."

Then everything went black...