009: Warning

Camille's POV

The balcony air hit different up here — cooler, cleaner, far enough from the ballroom that the string quartet thinned into something almost peaceful. I leaned against the railing and let my phone ring twice before answering.

"Well?" Monica's voice, no greeting, ever.

"Everything's going exactly as planned." I watched the city breathe below me, a thousand small lights doing their own version of what I'd spent five years learning to do — glitter enough that nobody looks too closely at what's underneath. "The room knows my face now, which was always half the point. Olivia's humiliated twice over in one night, and Kyrian's currently walking around convinced he's losing his mind." A small, private smile played on my lips. "I'd call that a good return on one evening."

"And the other half of the point?"

"Still working on it." I glanced back through the glass doors at the ballroom glittering behind me. "I'm heading home soon. The children will still be awake if I don't hurry."

"Don't get comfortable yet Camille." Monica's voice carried its usual warning wrapped in calm. "The easy part's over. And I believe you know that we're just beginning."

I was still holding the warmth of that thought when I heard heels on stone behind me.

I ended the call with Monica before anything blew my cover.

"Miss Stone."

I didn't need to turn to know who it was. Olivia's voice had a particular register when she was performing for an audience and a completely different one when she thought nobody important was listening. This was the second one — quieter, sharper, with all the sugar scraped off.

I turned anyway, unhurried, and let my face arrange itself into polite curiosity. Five years ago the sight of her would have made my stomach drop through the floor. Tonight it barely registered as more than an inconvenience wearing good jewelry.

She still didn't know me. I watched her searching my face the way you'd scan a crowd for someone you vaguely expected and never actually think you'll find — and finding nothing, because why would she. The woman she'd broken apart five years ago had been soft and apologetic and easy to talk over. This one wasn't offering her a single thread to pull.

"Miss Voss." I let the name land with exactly enough emphasis to be a small, private joke only I understood. "Can I help you with something?"

"I was hoping if we could talk?"

"Of course." I folded my hands over the railing, genuinely curious now — curious the way you're curious watching an animal decide whether a trap is a trap. After what her mouth had cost her twice tonight, in front of a room full of cameras, she'd sought me out anyway. That told me something about her that five years apart hadn't changed at all — Olivia had never once known how to leave well enough alone. Shame had never lived anywhere in her long enough to teach her anything.

"You know what, you didn't't win anything tonight," Olivia said, voice gone smooth and sweet in the specific way I remembered from years of watching her wield it on other women right before she took something from them. "Whatever that little ugly performance in the ballroom was. Don't mistake a moment for a victory."

I let a beat of silence sit there, savoring it. "Oh." I tilted my head slightly. Amused in what she just said. "So you do remember what happened earlier."

Her jaw tightened, just barely.

"I put you exactly where you belonged tonight, Miss Voss, in front of everyone who mattered to you. Twice, actually, if we're counting." I kept my voice light, almost kind, which I knew would cut deeper than anger ever could. "I'd hardly call that nothing."

"Careful." The sweetness thinned. "As someone so closely tied to the Stone family, I'd have thought you'd know better than to covet someone else's man."

"Man." How shameful. I let the word sit there like something distasteful. "Which man would that be?"

"Kyrian." She said it like I was supposed to flinch from the name. But rather,

I laughed. It came out real, which surprised even me — a genuine, unguarded sound that echoed faintly off the stone behind us. "You followed me all the way out here, away from the gala, to warn me off your husband?"

"I'm his wife." Something colder slid into her voice now, patience finally running out, the mask coming off in pieces. "Legally. In every way that matters. And I'd hate for the papers to start calling 'CAMILLE STONE' famous star a mistress."

"A mistress." I repeated it slowly, testing the shape of it, and something in my chest went very still and very sharp all at once. I stepped closer, unhurried, my heels striking the stone in that same rhythm that had already unsettled half the room tonight, until there was barely a foot between us. Close enough to smell her perfume — the same one, I noted distantly, that she'd worn the night she stood in my bedroom doorway wrapped in nothing but my husband's shirt.

I reached up and took her chin between two fingers, gentle, almost tender, the way you'd hold something you were about to break.

"Why would that worry me, Miss Voss?"

Confusion bloomed across her face, real this time, unpolished. "What are you talking about?"

I leaned in, my mouth close enough to her ear that my next words belonged to no one else on that balcony.

"You're the one who tangled herself up with a married man, darling." I let the words settle exactly where I wanted them, unhurried, precise. "Not me."

She went very still. Then she stepped back, fast, like she'd touched something that burned — the particular stillness of a person who's just heard a sentence they can't quite parse yet but already know, on instinct, means something they should be afraid of.

I straightened, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from my dress, and took one more step toward her, close enough that she had to fight the urge to retreat again.

"You're hardly in a position to warn anyone about anything tonight." I let that sit, watching it land, before I turned to walk back toward the light and noise of the ballroom. "But do keep trying. It's the most entertaining part of my evening so far."

"This isn't over," Olivia called after me, her voice thin now, stripped of the ice she'd walked out here wearing.

I glanced back once, over my shoulder, and let her see exactly how little that threat weighed on me.

"I'll be waiting," I said. "Proudly."