Chapter 17: Through the Glass
789 Words
The prison was cold in a way no heater could fix.
Concrete floors. Fluorescent lights that buzzed like insects. Camille sat in the visitation room, alone on one side of the reinforced glass, her reflection trembling faintly in the surface.
Across from her, the door opened.
Two guards escorted Becca in. Her wrists were cuffed. Her face was freshly bruised. But her eyes—those unholy, knowing eyes—sparkled.
Camille’s stomach curled.
Becca sat. Didn’t speak. She only smiled, leaned forward, and placed her hand on the glass.
Camille didn’t move.
“I wondered how long you’d wait,” Becca finally purred.
“This isn’t for you,” Camille said coldly.
“No. It never was.” Becca tilted her head. “It was always for her. The girl inside you. The one who begged to be adored.”
Camille's fingers tightened around the phone.
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, but I do,” Becca whispered. “I know what you looked like when you first learned how to seduce pain. You didn’t cry when he asked for the open relationship, did you? You turned it into theater. You turned it into a weapon.”
Camille flinched.
Becca smiled wider. “There it is.”
---
Camille thought she would feel stronger after this confrontation.
Instead, she left the prison with hands shaking so badly she had to sit in her car for fifteen minutes before starting the engine.
She didn’t go home.
She didn’t call Lucien or Julian or Archer.
She drove.
Nowhere in particular. Just away. Until the city lights faded and the road turned black and endless.
And only when she was sure no one had followed, only when the silence became suffocating, did she scream.
Loud. Uncontrolled. Animal.
She screamed until her throat was raw and the car windows fogged.
But it wasn’t grief she felt.
It was rage.
Because Becca was right.
There was a part of Camille that missed being desired that violently. That obsessively. That purely.
And it terrified her.
---
She returned to the city at dawn.
Julian was waiting in her apartment.
“You shouldn’t have gone alone,” he said quietly.
Camille didn’t answer.
“You’re unraveling.”
Camille poured herself a glass of water. “Maybe I need to.”
Julian approached slowly. “What did she say to you?”
Camille met his gaze. “She told me the truth. The ugliest part of it.”
Julian’s jaw clenched. “That’s not truth. That’s her poison.”
“No,” Camille whispered. “It’s mine. She just knew where to find it.”
---
The days blurred.
Every night, Camille dreamed of mirrors. Of Becca’s face on her own. Of hands—her own, sometimes—not letting go.
She started seeing a therapist.
But halfway through the second session, she found herself playing the role of the patient too well. Too polished. Too dramatic.
It made her sick.
She left early, no explanation.
She couldn’t be helped. Not like this.
Not when obsession had become the only thing that felt real.
---
Lucien brought her a folder.
“Security footage,” he said. “From your building.”
Camille flipped it open.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Footage of herself—at least, that’s what it looked like—walking into her building three nights ago.
Except she hadn’t been there.
Becca.
Or someone who looked exactly like her.
“She’s got someone outside,” Lucien said. “An accomplice. A handler. Someone pulling strings.”
Camille’s voice was hollow. “Or she’s found a way out.”
Lucien shook his head. “Impossible. We’d know.”
“Would we?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
---
That night, Camille sat in front of her vanity for the first time in weeks.
She stared into the mirror.
Tried to trace where she ended and Becca began.
She touched her lips.
Red. Always red.
That was Becca’s color, wasn’t it?
No, it had been hers first.
She just didn’t wear it like a warning.
She wore it like invitation.
Her phone buzzed.
A new message.
Unknown number.
“Do you miss her yet?”
Camille swallowed hard.
Typed back:
“You’re wasting your time.”
The reply came instantly:
“No. I’m feeding yours.”
---
She didn’t tell the others.
She couldn’t.
If she did, they’d take her off the case. Lock her away in some glass tower. Protect her from the very thing she needed to confront.
Becca wasn’t haunting her anymore.
She was becoming her.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s what Camille needed.
To understand how obsession could start as a fire… and end as a mirror.
- Writer
