Chapter 16: Into the Fire
1012 Words
The robe clung to her like a second skin.
Red silk. The same shade Becca wore when she taunted her. The same color Camille had once worn for Lucien in Paris. It didn’t feel like a costume anymore. It felt like armor.
Camille stood at her window, the city stretched out beneath her like a waiting mouth.
“She’s baiting you,” Julian warned from the doorway.
“No,” she said without turning. “I’m baiting her.”
Lucien stepped forward, his jaw tight. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
Camille smiled faintly. “She already rewrote the story once. It’s time I took the pen back.”
Archer sat on the edge of her desk, arms crossed. “Tell me you’re not planning to lure her out.”
Camille walked to the mirror. “I don’t have to. She’s already watching.”
---
The plan was reckless.
Camille agreed to do an exclusive interview—her first public appearance since Becca’s arrest. A live broadcast. One night only. No delays. No edits.
Lucien objected. Julian fought her on it. Even Archer, usually the wild card, hesitated.
“She’ll find a way to get close,” Julian said. “She always does.”
“Then let her,” Camille said.
---
The studio was locked down tighter than a vault.
Snipers. Agents. Surveillance on every face in the crowd. Lucien stood behind the camera crew, arms folded, scanning the audience like a panther.
Julian hovered just off-stage.
Camille sat beneath the lights, her robe replaced by a sculpted black dress. Her hair slicked back. No jewelry. No weakness.
The host smiled too brightly. “Tonight, we speak with Camille Grey, the woman at the center of a storm.”
Camille smiled back. “You mean the eye of the storm.”
The host chuckled nervously. “Tell me, Camille… who is she? Your stalker?”
Camille didn’t blink. “A symptom. Of what happens when the world falls in love with a projection.”
The audience leaned in.
“She's not the disease,” Camille continued. “She’s the mirror. And I let her reflect something too long.”
---
Halfway through the broadcast, a producer whispered into the host’s earpiece.
Panic flickered across his face.
Camille felt her stomach tighten.
“What is it?” she asked.
He faltered. “We… have an intrusion.”
Lucien was already moving.
Julian reached for his weapon.
The screen behind Camille—meant to show soft images of her past—glitched.
And then changed.
To video.
Grainy, raw, intimate footage.
Of Camille—but not her.
Becca.
Wearing her clothes. In her house. Sleeping in her bed.
The crowd gasped.
“Turn it off!” Archer barked from the control room.
Too late.
Camille stood slowly, eyes locked on the screen.
Becca turned to the camera in the video. Smiled.
And whispered:
“I’m inside you now.”
---
The broadcast was cut.
Chaos erupted.
Lucien grabbed Camille’s arm and yanked her off-stage. Julian covered them both, weaving through the panicked crew. Archer intercepted them near the exit, his phone lit up with alerts.
“She was never in the building,” he snapped. “The feed was hijacked. She’s still locked up—but someone’s helping her.”
Camille’s voice was icy calm. “Then it’s not over.”
Lucien turned to her, furious. “This is what I warned you about.”
“And now the world saw what she really is,” Camille said. “A parasite. A virus. She wanted fame? Let her drown in it.”
---
That night, Camille didn’t go home.
She returned to the apartment where it had all started—the one where her husband had asked for an open relationship. Where she’d first met Damien, Julian, and Archer.
The apartment was mostly empty now.
A shell of the life she used to have.
She walked to the bathroom.
Opened the vanity drawer.
Inside: a small silver razor. Clean. Sharp. Familiar.
Becca’s final note had said: “I know where you keep your blades.”
She held it up to the light.
Saw her reflection in the steel.
And saw Becca’s eyes staring back.
---
She didn’t cut herself.
But she cut the robe.
Shredded it into ribbons and fed it to the fireplace.
Julian arrived half an hour later. Found her kneeling in front of the flames, watching the silk burn.
“It was never just about her,” Camille whispered. “It was about the part of me that let her in.”
“You’re not responsible for her madness.”
“I’m responsible for what I created inside myself. The hole she crawled into.”
Julian knelt beside her. “So fill it.”
She looked at him. “With what?”
“With us.”
---
They made love like it was a reckoning.
No silk. No lace. No performative moaning or games.
Just skin. Bone. Mouths desperate to rewrite what had been stolen.
Camille felt every scar along Julian’s ribs. Every tremble in his hands.
He whispered her name like a prayer, like a warning.
She whispered his like a dare.
When it was over, they didn’t speak.
They didn’t need to.
The quiet held them like a secret.
---
The next morning, Camille received one final gift.
A USB, hand-delivered by someone in disguise.
Lucien intercepted it, but Camille insisted on watching it alone.
It was only thirty seconds long.
Becca—chained, bruised, smiling—looked directly at the camera.
“You think you won. But I’ll live longer than you, Camille. In whispers. In fantasies. In every man who wonders what it’s like to taste your fear.”
Then she leaned closer.
“And when they do… I’ll be the one they see.”
---
Camille stood, trembling.
Then she picked up her phone.
Dialed a number she swore she never would.
“Put me through,” she told the voice on the other end. “To the prison. I want a face-to-face.”
- Writer
