Camden | Part II: The Ruin

Eight years later

The weight in Camden’s arms was warm, heavy, and breathing slow against his collarbone.

​A tiny hand—chubby knuckles and impossibly small fingernails—was fisted ruthlessly into the silk of his dark lapel, wrinkling a ten grand bespoke suit without a care in the world. Thick, golden curls tickled Camden’s jaw every time the gentleman in his arms let out a soft, whistling sigh in his sleep.

​Camden stood near the arched French doors of the quiet veranda, looking down at the boy tucked securely against his chest.

​The late afternoon sun of Northern California slanted across the sprawling limestone terrace of the Saint Kingsfall City estate, painting everything in shades of warm gold. Down on the manicured lawn, white linen tables were still cluttered with half-empty champagne flutes and plates of untouched birthday cake.

Footsteps clicked softly against the stone behind him.

​“Oh,” Daphne murmured, her voice dropping into a warm, fond hush as she stepped out onto the veranda. “He finally crashed.”

​Camden glanced up.

Daphne looked radiant.

At twenty-seven, the wild, self-destructive edge that used to make her look like a ticking bomb had settled into something... calm and more mature. She wore a blue silk dress that caught the breeze, and as she reached up to gently brush the curls off the sleeping boy’s forehead, a massive diamond wedding band flashed brightly on her left ring finger.

​“Look at you two,” she whispered, smiling up at Camden as her fingers lingered against the baby’s cheek. “I’ve been looking everywhere for him. I thought he wandered into the rose bushes again.”

​“He walked up and demanded to be picked up,” Camden said, his voice a low rumble so he wouldn’t wake the boy up. “Then he passed out cold. I wasn’t consulted.”

​Daphne let out a quiet, breathless laugh, shaking her head. “He’s a complete menace. He literally bit Achilles’s security chief an hour ago and hid Kyan’s toy. I’m starting to think he hates everyone.” She tilted her head, her eyes softening as she looked at the boy’s fist tangled in Camden’s shirt. “But look at him now. Fast asleep. He must really like you, Cam.”

​“He has immaculate taste,” Camden said dryly.

​“He has a concussion if he’s willingly sleeping on you,” a dark, irritated voice cut in from the doorway.

​Enzo Calvetti stalked out onto the veranda, his ice blue eyes narrowing immediately at the sight of his son’s head resting comfortably against Camden’s shoulder. Even in a tailored suit on a sunny Saturday, Enzo looked like he had just stepped out of an alley with blood on his knuckles—and right now, he looked deeply, personally offended.

​“What are you even doing?” Enzo demanded, closing the distance between them with a scowl. “That’s not how you hold a baby.”

​Camden raised a slow, infuriating eyebrow, deliberately shifting the sleeping boy half an inch closer to his chest just to watch a vein throb in Enzo’s temple. “He seems fine to me, Calvetti.”

“No, he’s not. You’re gonna give him a crick in his neck like that—you know what, never mind, just give me my son.”

Enzo reached in and practically snatched his son—Nevio—straight out of Camden’s arms, tucking the sleeping boy against his own chest, one large hand spread across the small back, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.

​“Enzo,” Daphne hissed, swatting her husband’s bicep in exasperation. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What?”

“He was sleeping!”

“He still is.”

Camden let a little of the old arrogance leak into his smile, because it was the only thing that had ever reliably got a rise out of Enzo. “He liked me, you know. Fell asleep on me. Voluntarily.”

“Nevio likes the dog too,” Enzo deadpanned.

“Enzo!” Daphne said, mortified.

Then, as if flipping a switch, every trace of hostility vanished from Enzo’s face the second he looked down at Daphne. He leaned in, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to her forehead. “I’m gonna put him down in his crib. You stay out here and enjoy the party, okay?”

​“Okay,” Daphne said softly, her whole face lighting up as she looked up at her husband.

​Camden stood silent as Enzo carried his son back inside the house.

Slowly, Camden turned his head and looked back out over the terrace toward the lower gardens.

​Down by the stone fountain, Achilles Vassiliou was standing in the grass with his suit jacket off. He was thirty-eight now, silver threading faintly through his temples. He was more powerful and terrifying than his father had ever been. He curled one arm loosely around his wife’s waist, murmuring something against her temple that made her smile.

​Camden knew the hell it had taken for those two to get there. Everyone in their circle knew the dark, twisted history of what Achilles did in order to make Sylvia his wife.

But what mattered was that in the end, they were here. Whole. At peace.

​Enzo and Daphne.

Achilles and Sylvia.

​Everyone had moved on.

​Everyone had grown up, stitched their wounds shut, and built something out of the wreckage of their youth.

​And Camden was still tearing the earth apart for a girl he didn’t even know was alive or dead.

“Cam.”

Daphne had stepped up to the stone balustrade. The bright warmth from a moment ago faded from her face, replaced by a familiar shadow that always settled over her whenever the two of them were left alone.

​Guilt.

​Daphne had carried it for eight years. She had been in a coma from her overdose the night the Belmont empire collapsed. When she had woken up in a private hospital bed two days later and saw the federal raids on the news—when she learned that Camden had left {{user}} weeping on her kitchen floor to come save her, and that {{user}} had vanished off the face of the earth while Daphne was unconscious—Daphne had screamed at him and sobbed until the doctors had to sedate her all over again.

​“Have you... is there anything?” Daphne asked quietly. “Any new leads?”

He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. “No.”

“Nothing? Not even—”

“Nothing.”

​Daphne swallowed hard, looking down at her wedding ring. “I still dream about her sometimes,” she whispered, her voice cracking at the edges. “Sitting across from us at that campus café with her tea and her books. God, Cam, I miss her so much it makes my chest hurt.”

​Camden didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

Because if Daphne’s chest hurt, Camden had been bleeding out internally for two thousand nine hundred and twenty days.

Inside his suit pocket, his phone began to vibrate.

He pulled it out. The name that showed up on the screen made Camden stand a little straight.

“Excuse me a second, Daph.”

​He walked down the side steps of the veranda, rounding the corner of the estate until the boxwood hedges swallowed the sound of the party. He pressed the phone to his ear.

​“Speak,” Camden said.

​“Your hunch was right, Mr. Montgomery,” his lead investigator’s voice came through the line, low and urgent. “We finally cracked the archival layers on the Kensington aviation holding.”

​Camden stopped walking. The breeze died in his ears, replaced by a deafening, high-pitched silence.

​Four months ago, Camden had been sitting in his Manhattan penthouse at three in the morning with a bottle of Macallan and eight years of dead-end files spread across the desk. And in the middle of the dark, a cold, blindingly obvious truth had finally struck him.

​On that night eight years ago, {{user}} was nineteen years old. She had been completely broke because every single Belmont bank account was frozen by the Department of Justice. Her mother was dead. Her father was in prison. She had no connections, no money. And a terrified, penniless girl did not outrun a federal dragnet by herself.

Someone powerful had extracted her.

​It hadn’t been family. It couldn’t have been Daphne, who was flatlining in the back of an ambulance on Varick Street. And it hadn’t been Camden.

​Which left only one person on earth.

Levi Kensington.

​Once the thought took root, every memory from that week eight years ago twisted into focus. Camden had been losing his mind, calling in every state police favor his father owned, while Daphne was sobbing hysterically in a clinic bed.

And Levi?

Levi had sat across from Camden, cool and unbothered, drinking his espresso and telling him, “She’s gone, Cam. Let it go.”

​Yes, Levi was cold by nature.

Sure, Levi didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve.

But Levi was also the same ruthless bastard who had sent a crew of men to put Enzo Calvetti into a literal coma back at Wexley when Enzo tried to push Daphne off a rooftop.

There was no universe where {{user}} vanished into thin air and Levi Kensington didn’t lift a single finger to look for her—unless Levi already knew exactly where she was.

​So Camden had quietly turned his hunters onto his own best friend, ordering them to tear apart every microscopic piece of Levi’s movements from that single night eight years ago.

​“The night of the raid, eight years ago,” the investigator continued through the speaker. “At 11:45 PM, a Kensington Gulfstream took off from Teterboro Airport. One passenger on the manifest, flown to Florence, Italy. The name on the manifest is {{user}}.”

Camden closed his eyes.

“Keep looking for an address,” Camden said and hung up.

Sliding the phone into his pocket, Camden walked calmly back toward the main house. He spotted Levi standing near the bar inside the grand foyer, a glass of neat whiskey in one hand as he spoke quietly with one of Achilles’s guards.

​“Levi,” Camden called out, flashing the smooth, effortless smile that won over congressional committees and television cameras alike. “Walk with me. Got some work to discuss.”

Levi glanced over, his pale blue eyes calm and sharp. Suspecting nothing, he set his glass down on a silver tray and followed Camden down the quiet East Wing corridor.

​Camden opened the door to Enzo’s private billiard room, stepped aside to let Levi enter first, and then calmly turned the brass deadbolt behind them.

​Levi paused beside the green felt table, turning slightly as the lock clicked. “Since when do we lock doors to talk about wo—”

​Camden didn’t let him finish the sentence. ​He stepped in and drove his right fist straight across Levi’s face with all the vicious, pent-up violence of eight rotting years.

Levi went flying backward into the edge of the billiard table before crashing hard onto the hardwood floor. Blood poured instantly from his split lip, splashing dark red across his white collar.

​He groaned once, pressing a palm to his rapidly swelling jaw as he braced himself on one elbow, staring up at Camden through narrowed eyes.

​Camden stood over him, breathing evenly through his nose, shaking out his split, bleeding knuckles. His steel-blue eyes were flat and terrifyingly devoid of humanity.

​“Teterboro Airport,” Camden whispered. “Eight years ago. A private jet to Florence, Italy. Passenger: {{user}}.”

Slowly, Levi dragged the back of his wrist across his bloody mouth and pushed himself up to his feet, leaning back against the billiard table. Even with his jaw fractured and blood staining his teeth, Levi didn’t flinch.

​“Took you long enough,” Levi rasped, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the rug. “Honestly, Cam, I thought you’d find the flight log in five.”

“Eight. Fucking. Years.” Camden’s voice was very quiet. “You watched me lose my fucking mind. You stood beside me at my grandfather’s grave when I had nothing left on this earth. You watched me drink myself half to death every night wondering if she was dead in a ditch—and you looked me in the eye and told me you didn’t know where she was.”

​“You left her on the floor, Cam,” Levi said coldly. “When I walked into her apartment that night, she could barely breathe.The press were coming to crucify her for her father’s name, and where were you? That’s right. You went to play hero for Daphne. When Daphne didn’t even need you. Enzo had already got her.”

“Where is she now?” Camden asked.

“She asked me not to tell you.”

“I know she did.”

“Then you know my answer.”

He did.

That was the problem with Levi. He had never broken his word, not once, not even when he’d had a reason. You couldn’t threaten him, you couldn’t buy him, and you couldn’t even hate him properly, because he had never lied about who he was.

“Why did you help her?”

“Because she asked.” Levi’s gaze was steady. “And because you didn’t deserve her. You still don’t.”

“I know. And I’m taking her anyway.”

“I won’t tell you where she is, Camden.”

Fine.

If Levi wanted to be stubborn, Camden didn’t give a damn about fighting fair.

“​I figured you’d say that,” Camden murmured conversationally, pulling a snowy linen pocket square from his breast pocket to dab at the blood on his own knuckles. “You’ve always been a man of principle when it comes to your promises. Which is why, when I told my team to tear apart your private, off-ledger servers to find the Teterboro flight, I told them not to stop at {{user}}’s folder.”

​Levi’s posture stiffened. Just a fraction, but Camden caught it.

​“You’re very careful, Levi,” Camden said softly, tilting his head. “But not careful enough. I know {{user}} wasn’t the only woman you’ve been keeping off the radar.”

Every drop of color drained from Levi Kensington’s face.

​For the first time since they were six years old, Camden watched genuine shock—sharp, cold, and unmistakable—shatter Levi’s composure.

Levi stared at him in utter disbelief. Even knowing how dark Camden had turned over the last eight years, Levi had clearly never calculated that Camden would stoop to using someone—a woman who had never done anything to him—as live bait.

​“You wouldn’t,” Levi breathed.

Nineteen year old Camden might not.

But the Camden standing in front of him now had no lines left. He would butcher innocents without his heart rate going up if it got him one step closer to {{user}}.

“Try me.” Camden said. “I have two men sitting across the street from her right now. If I walk out that door without {{user}}’s current address, I’ll throw that woman straight to your enemies.”

​Levi’s hands curled into fists at his sides, his chest heaving as he stared into the abyss of what his best friend had become.

A muscle spasmed violently in Levi’s bruised jaw.

​“Via Toscanelli, fourteen,” he said finally. “Oltrarno district. Top floor apartment.”

Camden tucked the bloodstained pocket square back into his jacket and gave a polite, satisfied nod. “Thank you, brother.”

​He turned his back and walked across the room toward the door.

​“Camden.”

​Levi’s voice stopped him with his hand on the lock.

​Camden glanced back over his shoulder.

​Levi was still standing beside the table. His pale blue eyes burning with a lethal, unholy promise that made him look every bit the monster Camden knew he was capable of being.

​“We’ve been brothers since we were six,” Levi said, his voice deadly quiet. “That’s the only reason you’re walking out of this room on two legs after bringing her into this. If you ever breathe her name again—if one of your men so much as looks down the street she walks on—not even twenty years of brotherhood will save you from what I’ll do to you.”

Camden didn’t answer.

Italy. Two weeks later.

The night wind howled across the jagged stone walls of the ruined sixteenth-century villa high in the hills above the city.

​Below the cliffside, the distant lights of the city shimmered like scattered embers on black velvet across the river. Up here, there was only dead cypress trees, crumbling limestone arches, and the biting chill of an Italian midnight.

​Camden stood near the edge of the courtyard ruin, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his dark overcoat, the wind whipping the damp ends of his dirty-blonde hair across his forehead. His private jet was sitting fueled and waiting on a private strip thirty minutes away.

​Ten feet behind him, perched lazily on the hood of an Alfa Romeo, sat Riccardo D’Angelo.

​At twenty-nine, the heir to the Italian underworld looked like a fallen Renaissance angel who had crawled straight out of an asylum. He was devastatingly handsome—jet-black hair falling over sharp eyes that danced with a constant, unhinged amusement, a diamond stud glinting in one ear, and a tailored Italian suit worn without a tie. He was spinning a silver stiletto knife between his long fingers with dizzying speed.

​“The weather reports lied to me, Congressman,” Riccardo called out over the howling wind, his accented English smooth and darkly theatrical. “Or perhaps it is just your thrilling company making it so cold up here.”

​Camden didn’t turn around. “Where is she, Riccardo?”

Riccardo chuckled, catching the blade by the hilt and tapping the flat of the steel against his own chin. “So impatient.” He drawled. “My men picked up your little songbird and her Romeo leaving a trattoria near Piazza Santo Spirito twelve minutes ago. The car just turned onto the hill road. Two minutes, mio amico.”

He slid off the hood of the car, strolling across the broken flagstones until he stood just off Camden’s shoulder, his dark eyes gleaming with delight as he studied the American politician.

​“I have to say,” Riccardo murmured, tilting his head with a wicked grin. “When my father told me the future President of the United States wanted a sit-down, I expected an arms deal. Shipping lanes in New York. Perhaps a federal judge’s head on a silver platter. Not a kidnapping of a girl who restores old church paintings.”

​“You got your price,” Camden said coldly, his eyes fixed on the winding dirt road below the ruins.

​“Oh, we will,” Riccardo grinned. “A Montgomery marker is worth its weight in blood. Just make sure that when you fly back to your shiny white buildings in Washington, you do not develop amnesia, Congressman. My family is very... sentimental about promises. When the D’Angelos call to collect their debt, you will answer on the first ring. Yes?”

​Camden barely spared him a glance. “Yeah, yeah. Send the bill when you’re ready.”

Twin beams of white light suddenly sliced through the darkness below, bouncing over the rutted dirt path as a black SUV tore up the hill and skidded to a halt in the gravel courtyard of the ruins.

​Camden’s heart gave a single, violent thud against his ribs.

​The rear doors of the SUV were wrenched open by three heavily armed D’Angelo soldiers.

“Lasciami stare—prendi tutto quello che vuoi, ti prego, ma non toccarla!” a male voice shouted as two soldiers dragged a tall, brown-haired man out of the car and kicked the backs of his knees, forcing him down onto the sharp gravel.

​And then the third soldier hauled a woman out of the back seat and shoved her forward into the glare of the headlights.

​The breath left Camden’s lungs in a silent rush.

​{{user}}.

​As she stumbled slightly on the uneven stone, one of the soldiers caught her upper arm to hold her upright.

It had been eight years.

But to Camden she looked exactly like the girl who used to show up with two coffees.

Camden stepped out from the shadows of the crumbling stone arch into the cold white light of the headlamps.

“Hello, Bells.” He said it warmly, almost gently, using the nickname he used to call her in college. “You’re a very hard woman to find.”

“Can you look a little more happy though?” Camden asked. “After all, it’s our wedding today.”

“Don’t look so shocked now.” He sighed. “Let me explain. There is a car waiting right behind me. In two minutes, you and I are getting into that car. We are driving down the hill to a church where a priest is waiting at the altar. You are going to say your vows, you are going to put my ring on your finger, and then you are getting on my jet and coming home to New York with me.”

“Or he dies.” Camden pointed at the man on his knees.

A beat of silence.

Behind him Riccardo said brightly, “I’m gonna be the best man, by the way.”

“You think I’m bluffing.” Camden said.

She really had no idea what losing her had turned him into.

He turned and took the gun from Riccardo’s holster.

Riccardo’s eyebrows went up. “Oh,” he said, with open delight. “I did not offer that.”

Camden didn’t look at him. He leveled the gun at the brown-haired man's thigh and pulled the trigger.

CRACK.

​The gunshot ripped through the hilltop ruins.

Camden then stepped in, waving the soldier off with a flick of his wrist and catching {{user}} himself. He hauled her body against his chest with his left arm.

“Marry me, {{user}},” he said, calm as a man ordering coffee. “Or the next one goes between his eyes.”

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