004: The Wolf Wears Silk

Camille's POV

"Camille! Camille Stone, over here!"

Flashbulbs. Screaming. My name in strangers' mouths like it belonged to them a little too. I smiled for the cameras outside the Singapore premiere, signed a few programs, let my security peel the crowd back just enough to walk through it, and didn't stop smiling until the car door shut and the noise dropped away behind tinted glass. I slid my sunglasses on, leaned my head back against the seat, and let myself breathe.

Five years. Some nights it still felt like five minutes ago.

I caught my reflection in the window glass — slimmer, steadier jaw, sharper collarbones, a body I'd trained and disciplined and finally made peace with rather than fought against — and thought, not for the first time, that Camille Voss would have walked straight past this woman on the street and never once recognized her. That had been the point, in the beginning. Somewhere along the way it had stopped being armor and started being simply mine.

I remembered waking up in a private hospital room that smelled like money instead of antiseptic, my ribs bound so tight I could barely fill my lungs, and a doctor telling me the baby had survived — barely, and only because I'd been rushed in fast enough for it to matter. He'd also told me, gently, the way doctors learn to deliver things that can't be softened, that if I chose to end the pregnancy, the trauma to my womb likely meant there wouldn't be a next time. Whatever damage the beating had done, my body wasn't going to offer a third miracle.

I remembered lying there thinking there was no sense keeping a child no one wanted. And then I remembered Nancy's laugh, the exact shape of it, and decided nobody was going to make that choice for me twice — not Kyrian, not Olivia, not even my own grief.

I never hid the truth from my children once they were old enough to understand it. Not so they'd hate their father. They simply deserved to know exactly where they came from, and I refused to be the kind of mother who edits her children's own history to spare herself the conversation.

The woman who'd stopped for me that night on the sidewalk had a name I hadn't known yet, back when I was bleeding into her arms and certain I was dying. Monica Stone. She told me why, once I was well enough to ask.

"You look like my daughter," she said, no softness in it at all, just fact laid flat on a table. "Aurora Stone. Her fiancé and the woman he was sleeping with arranged the crash that killed her, after he'd already broken her heart once trying to keep them both." Something old and unhealed passed over her face, gone as quickly as it came. "I wasn't fast enough for her. I was not going to be too slow for you as well."

She offered me a choice that week, not charity — a contract. She would be my guardian, teach me the parts of the game nobody teaches a woman raised to be sweet: leverage, patience, how to make grown men kneel and call it business. In return, I took her name. Stone, her own surname, the one she'd built an empire under — Siyah Entertainment, three continents, more doors opened by that single word than my entire old life had ever managed. She turned me into an actress first, then a producer, then a name people scream at outside cars. I built every bit of it wanting exactly one thing underneath the smile.

Home smelled like lemongrass and crayons, the particular chaos of a house that runs on small feet.

"Mommy!" Two small bodies hit my legs before I'd even set my bag down. Carolyn, already wearing three mismatched necklaces and a tutu she'd clearly assembled herself, and Megan, a picture book still clutched in one fist like she'd been mid-chapter when she heard the car in the driveway. Four years old, both of them, hugging me with the specific violence only toddlers manage without apology.

"Where are your brothers?" I asked, crouching to kiss the tops of two dark heads.

"Adrian's on his laptop," Megan reported, very seriously, like a scandal. "And Aldric's outside shooting hoops again. He says he's going to play in the real league someday."

Sure enough, Adrian came padding in a minute later hauling a laptop nearly as big as his own torso, already talking before he'd fully entered the room about some program he swore could "help Mommy find the bad guys on the computer." Aldric arrived seconds behind him, basketball still tucked under one arm, sweat-damp and grinning, insisting I had to come watch his free throws before dinner. I had no idea whether Adrian's program actually worked or whether Aldric's form was any good. I told them both they were brilliant anyway, because at four years old, teaching yourself code before you can tie your shoes, or draining shots taller kids couldn't make, probably was.

Nobody — not the specialists, not Monica, not me lying in that hospital bed five years ago — predicted four heartbeats instead of one. The doctors called it a rare, stubborn kind of biology. I called it Nancy's answer to a question I never got to ask her out loud.

A maid appeared at the doorway. "Ma'am, Miss Stone would like to see you in the garden."

I found Monica exactly where I expected her, a teacup gone cold on the table beside her chair. "New York," she said, without preamble. "Pack everyone. All of you."

"The children too?"

"Especially the children." She set her cup down, and for the first time that morning her face turned fully businesslike. "Voss Industry is drowning, Camille. Two failed product launches, a board losing patience, and a debt structure that's about to come due faster than Kyrian can cover it. He needs fresh capital or his company gets swallowed by someone less patient than us. Siyah has spent eight months quietly buying up the smaller creditors holding his paper. We now control enough of his debt that when we sit across from him, he doesn't get to say no to whatever terms we offer."

I felt something settle cold and satisfied in my chest. "And he doesn't know it's us."

"He knows Siyah Entertainment wants a content partnership. He doesn't know who signs the checks behind it, or that the woman closing the deal used to share his last name." She studied me over the rim of her cup. "You've spent five years learning patience. This is where I find out if you learned it well enough to use it, or if five years of comfort made you soft again."

"I worry about the children being there."

"Then let me worry instead, because those children are braver than you give them credit for." Her voice left no room to argue. "Every detail is handled — the penthouse, the security, the paperwork. You have exactly one job in New York, and it isn't mothering from a boardroom. It's making sure Kyrian Voss signs his name next to yours without realizing whose hand is actually on the pen. Nancy deserves justice, Camille."

I thought of Kyrian, who once threw one woman away like she cost him nothing. He had no idea four heirs were coming to burn what he'd built down to the studs. I thought of Nancy too, and whoever had put poison in a bowl of chicken broth five years ago and never once answered for it. That debt was still open on my ledger.

"It's time," Monica said, "to show them what real power looks like."

The four of them thundered back in a moment later, breathless, cheeks flushed. "Grandma Monica said we're going on a family vacation!" Carolyn shouted, and three other faces lit up behind her — Megan clutching her book to her chest, Aldric still bouncing on the balls of his feet, Adrian already asking if there'd be Wi-Fi on the plane — none of them aware their mother was terrified and thrilled in equal measure.

***

New York arrived in a blur of tarmac and black cars. Monica took the children ahead to the penthouse; I rode alone, watching the skyline stitch itself together outside the window, when my phone lit up with her message.

An invitation. The Argent Gala — elites, cameras already flashing at the door. Kyrian would be there. Olivia would be there. His company wanted a partnership with Siyah Entertainment, and Monica had made certain I would be the one sent to close it.

I typed back three words. It's my pleasure.

I looked out at the city lights and let myself smile, slow and private, the kind nobody photographs because nobody's ever meant to see it.

They tried to kill a sheep five years ago.

They had no idea they'd woken up a wolf instead.