The silence thickened around me.
I didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Then I tapped into the tracking app. The burner number bounced through VPN routes. Encrypted. Lazy. But not hidden. Not from me.
I stood. Walked to the closet behind the desk. Entered the code. The safe hissed open. Inside: a pistol. Matte black. Polished. I checked the magazine. Loaded. I didn’t grab my phone. Didn’t need a call. Didn’t need a name. Just thescentof a target. And I had it now.
I walked to the window. Looked out over the city. Not for reflection. Not for breath. Forrange.They thought they could buy her. Claim her in silence. Use her body like it hadn’t already been marked by something deeper.
I smiled.
Barely.
Because now—they’d learn what it meant to crawl toward something theyneverhad a chance of owning.
I moved before the sun. Didn’t need the treadmill. Didn’t need to sweat it out of my system. I needed to act. The numberwas already tagged. Burner. Sloppy. Bounced through two fake proxies—cheap ones. He wasn’t a professional. Just a man who wanted what he couldn’t afford. Something that already belonged to me.
I traced the signal. He used a hotel Wi-Fi. Logged in twice. Fake name. Fake ID. The alias was familiar.
Camille’s.
Stupid.
He left a trail because he didn’t think anyone was following. But I don’t follow. I end things. Twelve minutes later, I was out the door. Black coat. Gloves in the pocket. Not to protect myself. To keep what I took from staining anything that mattered.
The hotel staff didn’t stop me. People rarely do. Room 1203. No knock. Keycard slipped into the reader. Door unlocked. He turned from the minibar. Stopped moving. He knew. Not who I was. What I was.
I closed the door. He opened his mouth. I shook my head once. Quiet. Clean. “You paid for silence.” A beat. “I’m here to honor it.”
I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t rush it. It wasn’t punishment. It was removal. One punch. Broken ribs. Shoulder out of socket.
Enough.
I crouched beside him. Whispered something just for him. Then left. No blood on my shirt. No mess on my hands. But when I came home—I felt it. She did too.
Through the walls. The floor. The silence I wore like a second skin. She didn’t see me. But she felt me. The part of her that still believed I could touch her like a man?—
Now understood what it meant to be owned by something far worse.
The man’s phone was still warm in his pocket.
I didn’t ask for the passcode.
Didn’t need it.
The thumbprint worked fine—once the hand stopped shaking. I removed his passcode and entered one of my own. Simple really…now I had it all.
I sat on the edge of the hotel bed. Wiped the screen with a cloth from my pocket. Opened the gallery. Scrolled. The folder wasn’t labeled‘Cloe.’
That would’ve been too obvious.
It was labeled‘Sweet Camille.’
That was the first insult.
I didn’t blink. Just tapped it open. The images weren’t graphic. They didn’t need to be. They were worse for howintimatethey were.
They weren’t sent to me. That was the part that mattered. Not the lace. Not the bruise. Not the angle of her jaw or the slight turn of her head that made the picture look like an accident when it wasn’t.
She’d taken them on purpose.Sent them to someone else.Let someone else see skin I hadn’t touched since the night she left my bed in silence.
