Chapter 12 - Camille Understood She Had Nearly Signed Away Her Family
Camille walked away from everyone and stood beside the SUV for a moment, facing the hotel façade as if she needed something solid in front of her.
When she turned back, her face looked older. Not because time had passed, but because illusion had.
“My father spent thirty years building Bellamy Hotels,” she said. “After he died, my aunt and I fought to keep outside predators from carving it up. And I was about to let one into the family through the front door.”
Rosa’s voice softened for the first time.
“You weren’t foolish. You were targeted.”
Camille looked at her.
“That almost sounds worse.”
Rosa nodded slowly. “It is worse.”
Because that was the truth women were always asked not to say out loud. People preferred a cleaner story. That a woman had been careless. Blind. Vain. Lonely. Anything but deliberately studied and manipulated.
Camille glanced toward Pierce. “How many?”
Rosa knew what she meant.
“How many women?”
Mr. Keane answered. “Enough that Ellen started naming them instead of counting them.”
Dana opened one of the files recovered from the SUV and frowned.
“He had tonight timed down to the minute,” she said. “Dinner in the private orchid room at six. Toast at six-thirty. Signature packet after dessert. Draft wire instructions scheduled for release tomorrow morning.”
Camille’s face went cold.
“He told me dessert would come with a surprise.”
Rosa let out a breath she had been holding since Part 1 of this nightmare.
“The surprise was never for you.”
Camille looked at the scattered roses on the pavement, then at Rosa.
“Your daughter died trying to stop him before he got to me.”
Rosa’s eyes filled again, but this time with something different than raw grief.
Pride.
Painful pride, but pride all the same.
“Yes,” she said.
Camille stood there for a long second, absorbing it.
Then she made a decision.
She crossed the sidewalk to Rosa’s ruined stand, knelt in her burgundy dress among the fallen flowers, and began lifting bouquets out of dirty water and broken paper wraps.
Pierce stared at her in disbelief.
Camille didn’t even glance his way.
“I’m not going into that hotel as his victim,” she said. “I’m going in as your witness.”
And Rosa knew right then that Ellen’s warning had not died on that phone.
May you like
It had finally reached the woman it was meant to save.
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