She instantly stiffened, taking a large drink from her glass, before she rested it on her thigh and rocked it back and forth. There was tension in her shoulders, and the nails of her other hand were digging painfully into her thigh and he found himself wanting to pry them free, but he kept his seat.
“C. Tell me.”
“Camille.” The name came on a whisper and his heart tripped over itself as it suddenly tried to double his heart rate.
“What?” He asked, sounding just as stupid as he felt on the inside.
“My name is Camille.” Fuck. Her voice was perfect, sinfully sweet and there was no better name on the planet for her than that.
“Camille,” he repeated, and she lifted her eyes to his without moving her head. Those blue eyes gazed up at him through her lashes as if she were waiting for him to use the name against her somehow. She took another too-big drink of the whiskey, and the last thing he wanted was her piss drunk – which is where she’d be in a matter of minutes if he didn’t get something in her stomach. “Get up. We’re going to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.” She purposefully tilted up the glass again and he had to fight the urge to growl and rip it out of her hands.
“Too bad, you’re eating.” He pushed off the couch and marched towards her, grabbing her arm to haul her off the couch, and he almost smiled when he felt her resist.
That’s my girl.
His head snapped back at the possessive urge he’d felt, but he didn’t release her arm. “Get up, Camille.”
She narrowed her eyes on him, the firm set of her jaw showing just how much she was about to challenge him. “Spaghetti.”
“Huh?”
“I want spaghetti.”
He laughed, thinking over the stuff in his cabinets and he was pretty sure he had a jar of Prego somewhere, and he usually had some pasta on hand. All of the Italians he hung out with had affected his Latin roots, not to mention eating in NYC meant he was exposed to too many good restaurants to only eat Spanish food the rest of his life. “I think I can do that, but you have to promise not to finish that glass of whiskey until you’ve had a bite.”
She shrugged and held it at her side and finally let him pull her from the couch. This time she slipped her hand from his and followed him to the back of the house where the kitchen was, but it bothered him that she hadn’t let him keep hold of her.
Who the fuck was he all of a sudden?
‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ by The Beatles came to life in his head and he grumbled to himself as they stepped into the back of the house. Bright sunlight streamed in through the kitchen windows, greeting them and highlighting the backyard that was expertly maintained by people who were not him. The property was large and more than once he had wanted to get a dog, just to have someone to pass the days with when he was stuck here alone. The only problem was that Scarpa could send him off at any moment and there would be no one he’d trust with access to his house. Hell, he always made sure he was home when the maid service arrived and he personally let them into each room he wanted them to clean.
They probably thought he was crazy as fuck, but he didn’t particularly care.
Camille hopped up onto a stool that was tucked under the short bar that end-capped his kitchen, and she obediently kept the whiskey glass untouched in front of her. It took him only a few minutes to have various pots going to have the spaghetti cooking, and he mourned the fact that he had no fresh bread in the house.
Oh well, calories were calories and that’s all that mattered. He had never tried to be a chef.
He leaned against the counter by the stove, looking over at her as she traced patterns in the granite countertop. “Ready to tell me yet?”
“Hmm?” She raised her eyes, and he hated that there was still something off in them.
“What exactly happened last night?”
Again her shoulders tensed up and she clenched her hands into fists on the counter. “We’re not doing this.”
“Doing what?”
She gestured between the two of them, a hard edge in her voice when she spoke. “This sharing shit. Neither of our lives were probably easy, something led both of us to this life, and we don’t need to revisit it like we’re on an episode of Dr. Phil, alright?”
He stayed still and arched an eyebrow at her before he turned to face her completely. “Did someone hurt you?”
Camille stayed very still and for some insane reason he wanted to get his gun.
“Does someone need to die?” He asked and she lifted her eyes to him slowly, evaluating.
“They’re already dead.” Her voice was final, like the last pat of a shovel over a grave, and he smiled. He couldn’t help it. This girl was small enough that if he really tried, he could hurt her badly. Even though she had sincerely got a few hits in on him, one solid hit from him and she’d be down and out. She knew it, and he knew it, but the idea of actually striking her made his stomach turn. A belt? A crop? Sure. Hitting her? With his fist? He’d shoot himself first.
Who hurt you, Camille?
A completely foreign rage filled him at the idea that someone had done something to scar her so badly that his stage two deprivation had almost sent her permanently into LaLa Land. “I’m sorry.”
Her head lifted, and her brows pulled together in unspoken confusion as her blue eyes stared at him.
“About the box. The deprivation step. I didn’t know you’d react like that.” He shook his head and distracted himself by stirring the spaghetti in the water. “If you had called out for me, asked me to come, I would have. You were just crying though, I thought – Fuck it, I’m an asshole.”
Camille’s eyes were narrowed when he finally had the courage to look at her again, and he found her leaned forward on her elbows as if she were judging him, evaluating him, and if she knew a damn thing about him she’d condemn him. Finally, she broke her stare and spoke quietly. “It was the small space. The box.”
Why did that sound like forgiveness for what he’d put her through?
He nodded slowly. It hadn’t escaped his notice when she had locked up and panicked the moment he had lowered the box over her. Her nails had dug trenches in her palms and her feet had kicked, but he had assumed it was the normal panic of having something feel like it had closed over her. He should have known better, especially when the sobbing had started.
Looking at her now he couldn’t even imagine her breaking down the way he had heard through the monitor. She was too strong, a core of steel encased in the kind of feminine beauty that would have made him pause on the street to appreciate it. “It won’t happen again,” he promised.
“I still haven’t told you where Callahan is.” She drove a knife straight into the problem, and he had no answer to that, because it was true. There was no way that Scarpa would drop this, and admitting failure to his boss would put his own standing in jeopardy. He never failed. People who failed tended to disappear off the payroll – permanently.
“I know.” Mateo nodded and dumped the spaghetti into a strainer, turning the heat off to the sauce. A minute or so later he had a piping hot plate in front of her and he stayed on his side of the counter, standing to eat. He dropped a full glass of water in front of her, making one for himself as well, and smiled a bit as she started to drink it instead of the whiskey. They ate in silence, but he devoured his plate much faster than her while his mind spun in circles.
He had options. There were potential options, anyway. He just needed to make some calls.
“I’m going upstairs, and I’m going to leave you here. The house is locked down so don’t try to leave, but I want you to finish eating so I’m not locking you up.”
Her gaze lifted to his again, still vaguely vacant, and she had a smudge of spaghetti sauce at the edge of her lip that he had a sudden urge to lick off. Shaking his head he turned away from her to head back to his room. Once there he grabbed his phone and turned on the app that let him view his security cameras remotely. Verifying that she was s
till in the kitchen picking at her plate and finishing the water, he made a few calls. There was yelling, some questioning of his manhood, and a vague threat to steal his next job – but Tony finally agreed to let him meet with Scarpa. Today.
He snagged a new shirt for himself and changed from soft pants into the kind of uniform that Scarpa expected of all of them. Clean, neat, professional – and if his idea was going to work he needed to show up on point.
With a last glance in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look as insane as he felt he grabbed his gun, loaded it, and then flicked the safety on to tuck it into the holster at the back of his pants. He was pulling his jacket into place when movement on his phone caught his eye.
Camille was wandering around his house.
The motion detectors were automatically switching the camera display on his app to follow her and when she moved towards the front door he froze, tense, but she walked past and headed into the hall of rooms instead. He groaned and left his room to track her down.
Glancing at his phone one last time to make sure she hadn’t moved he shoved it into his pocket and jogged across the house to catch up to her. He slowed as he saw her, because she was still in his shirt and the way it played around the tops of her thighs, the black fabric making her skin practically glow – it was an image he wanted to have in his brain forever.
“What are you doing?” Mateo asked as he approached, and she turned to watch him move towards her with solid strides. He was back in a suit again, like the night before. She knew he was freshly showered, she’d smelled the soap on him when he’d picked her up on the bed even though her brain had been somewhere else for a while.
Somehow, he had pulled her out of that nightmare that wouldn’t end.
Too many flickering images behind her eyes, too many memories she had spent years burying on an endless loop, but he had guided her out. Slowly, and with the aid of whiskey, and spaghetti, she felt slightly more stable. Just a little further from that glittering knife-edge where the abyss had called to her and urged her to join.
“What’s in this room?” Camille brushed her hand over the flat door, eerily similar to the one upstairs. No doorknob. No keypad. She toyed with the edge of the hidden door in the wall, wondering what would happen if she put her hand inside it.
“Nothing.” His voice was defensive and that made her turn to look at him through her hair.
“I want to go inside.”
“No.”
A frisson of defiance rekindled inside her and she slid the hidden door aside, seeing a simple thumb print scanner. Just for the hell of it she pressed her thumb onto the screen, but nothing happened. With a sigh Mateo reached into his pocket and tugged out his phone, he tapped it a few times and then put it away.
“It won’t work for you.”
Camille smacked her hand against the door and turned to face him. “What’s in here?”
He growled in frustration. “Why do you want to go in there?”
“Because you clearly don’t want me to.” She held his gaze, those dark eyes boring into her without giving anything away. That was the most infuriating part of him. It took large swings of emotion to get him to express anything. In a normal conversation, when they weren’t physically trying to kill each other, he was placid water. Calm, cool, collected. It was fucking infuriating.
Mateo shoved a hand through his hair, clenching it in a fist at the back of his head. “I don’t know why you picked this room. Of all the fucking rooms in this place.”
“Because the door matches the one upstairs.” Camille couldn’t hide the smile that tilted her lips when he groaned. If he thought she wouldn’t catch on to something like that as she wandered through – he clearly still didn’t quite understand whom he had in his house.
“Fine. Move.” He stepped forward and caught the hidden flap before it settled back into place. With a quick touch to the scanner the door popped open in front of them, but she pushed in ahead of him.
Concrete.
That was the first thing she noticed. It covered the walls, the ceiling, the floor. There was a very slight down slope from the corners to a drain in the center. Camille swallowed as she took it in and then her eyes caught a gray hose coiled in the corner beneath a water faucet.
“So, this is where you take the men?” She gestured at the room and turned to face him. “A concrete cell with a drain in the floor with a hose to wash the blood away?”
“The hose also gives them access to water.” Mateo crossed his arms in the hall, his dark eyes giving nothing away as he stared at her. He was unapologetic, and for an instant she could imagine him beating a man to death in this room. Demanding some kind of answer, some information, before he finally shot them in the head and began to clean up.
The idea that he’d done things like that didn’t bother her. She had been ruthless as well. It was more the fact that he had this room in his house, ready and waiting.
“Is this the next step for me?” She asked and stepped backward at an even pace before she stopped just as she was over the drain. Darkness that had been pushed back temporarily surged inside her, threatening to drown her again and drag her even deeper than before. His temporary kindness hadn’t really meant anything. They were on opposing sides in this conflict and neither of them was going to bend. People like them never did. Camille spread her arms. “If this is the next stage then just go ahead and shoot me or stab me. Whatever you're going to do, just do it.”
Mateo growled and stepped forward into the doorframe. “Would you stop telling me to kill you? I’m tired of it, and you’re way too fucking bossy. In fact I'm going to whip your ass for that one. Now get out of there.”
“No!” She clenched her fists at her sides, feeling the sting as her nails pinched into her skin. “I don’t want to play your game anymore. Just shoot me. That’s where this is all heading anyway, because I'm never going to tell you where Callahan is.”
“Why?!” Mateo shouted at her, dropping his mask for a moment to reveal the rage boiling just under the surface. As cold as she felt, his passion and anger was like being near a bonfire. It was almost pleasant even though he was pissed at her.
“Because I can't.” She sighed at having to revisit the same old line again.
“I know you think you can't, but that's ridiculous, Camille.” He shook his head, growling in frustration. “Dammit, just save yourself!”
She didn’t try to stifle the laugh that bubbled up out of her. “You think telling you will save me? Even if you didn’t kill me once you have the intel, which is a shaky idea at best, Callahan will make sure all of your tortures and punishments look like a cake walk – and he definitely won't be getting me off as part of his torture plan. When he’s done with me I might be lucky enough for him to kill me quickly.” She shook her head. “No way.”
“You could switch. Work for my boss, he would –”
”He wouldn't take me and you know it. Traitors are traitors. Free agents have no loyalties, and I used to be one, but I ended up with Callahan.” She shrugged, a bitter taste filling her mouth. “No matter what I say, no matter what reasons I have, anyone else will just wonder what my angle is. So, just shoot me. Get it over with so you can find some new girl for your twisted little room.”
Mateo flinched back and stared at her for a minute, dark eyes revealing nothing. Then he reached behind himself and she knew even before she saw the shiny, black metal that he was drawing his gun. It was large, much larger than hers, and he was pointing it directly at her chest. His voice was calm again, and his face returned to a stoic mask as he stared at her. “Is this what you want?”
“Do it.”
For a long moment she stood there, her arms limp at her side, waiting. She had nothing on except for his shirt, which smelled like him. A heady mix of the spice of his soap, the masculine scent of his skin, and a hint of his laundry detergent. After he had left the kitchen she had buried her face in the fabric before stopping herself. Instead of thinking of how he had f
elt inside her, she had toyed with several of his knives, testing the weight of each of them – but she quickly realized there was no way to hide it when she was practically naked, and Mateo had already proved time and again she couldn’t overpower him.
The muzzle of the gun seemed to grow larger as she stared at it and not for the first time she wondered if this was what some of her marks felt like just before she pulled the trigger. Did they feel this strange peace, this resignation that they always knew how they would die, or had they fought it until the last moment? Mateo’s hand wavered, the gun wobbling, and then he dropped it to his side. “Why do you want to die?”
“Want to?” Camille laughed and felt tears burning the edges of her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? I'd love for you to let me go and tell your boss I was too damn stubborn to beat intel from, and that he just needs to leave me the hell alone. Find someone else.”
“I can't do that. You know that.” He paused as if the idea frustrated him, and then his dark eyes lifted to hers and she could see pain in them.
Why? Why the fuck do you care, Mateo?
She wanted to scream at him, but Mateo’s voice was soft when he spoke again, “Camille… if you don't want to die –”
She waved her hand at him to cut him off, not wanting to hear kind words out of his mouth. “This was how it was always going to end for someone like me. Don't tell me you've never thought about how this life would end for you. Standing in front of a plastic tarp, or dead in the street somewhere, or in a concrete room with a drain in the floor.” She spread her arms wide. “This is where people like us end up. I always knew it would happen to me one day, and I'm not afraid to die, Mateo. You can't be if you do what we do.”
Silence commanded the room for several minutes. His murder room felt like a lurking monster beneath her feet, waiting for blood. A place like this knew nothing else, and his vacillation between killer and white knight was leaving her brain with whiplash.
“You’re right.” He breathed and she felt her body tense, her eyes focusing on the gun at his side. “We’ll both die someday. Probably violently, and maybe in a room like this. All of that may be true, but that’s not how it’s ending today.” He shoved the gun in the back of his pants, and she laughed. An insane mixture of startling relief that he wasn’t going to shoot her, and astonishment that he had refused the opportunity to clear the slate and report back to Scarpa.
Lethal Sin (Dangerous Games Book 1) Page 7