Camille moved past Liam toward the daybed and sat down on it, crossing one leg over the other, her blazer falling open slightly with the movement. She looked at him and patted the space beside her.

Liam sat.

She looked at him for a moment. The same assessing quality she had in the main room, but without the audience now, it was more direct. Less performed. Just her actually looking at him.

Then she shifted.

She moved fluidly, turning toward him and swinging one knee across so she was straddling his lap, settling her weight down onto him with the ease of someone who had decided to do something and saw no reason to be tentative about it.

Her hands came to rest on his shoulders.

Her face was close to his now, close enough that he could smell her perfume properly, something warm and not sweet, sitting low on her skin.

She looked at him from that distance.

"I don’t mind listening to whatever you came here to say," she said. Her voice was at the register she used when it was just her and another person and the room was small. "But first." She tilted her head slightly. "I need you to promise me something."

Liam looked at her. "What?"

She leaned forward.

Her lips found the edge of his ear and she stayed there, her voice dropping to just above a breath, warm against his skin.

Liam’s eyes went wide.

Then a slow grin crossed his face, wide and genuine, the kind that didn’t happen often enough to be ordinary. "I’m down with that," he said. He looked at her. "Also. How did you know I had something to tell you."

Camille leaned back slightly, her hands still resting on his shoulders, her weight settled comfortably on his lap like she had no intention of going anywhere. She tilted her head. "I’ve dealt with enough people coming through that door out there to know when someone has something on their mind."It wasn’t hard."

Liam looked at her. "So you can read people."

"Every single one that walks through that door eventually." She said it simply, like it was just a fact about herself, no performance attached to it.

Liam smiled. "At least I’m learning something about you."

Camille’s mouth curved into something slower and more deliberate than a smile. She looked at him from her position above him, her bob sitting perfectly, the burgundy blazer falling open at the front. "There’s a lot you should know," she said, her voice dropping to the register that seemed to live just underneath her normal one, warm and unhurried. "Trust me. Once you start you won’t want to stop."

Liam held her gaze. "That’ll come soon enough."

"Then let’s get the bad news out of the way first," she said. She shifted her weight slightly, settling more comfortably, her hands moving from his shoulders to rest loosely on his chest. Not pushing. Just resting there. "Go ahead."

Liam looked at her. "You know about the crew we cleared out when we took the base."

"Shay kept me updated," she said. "Every step." Her fingers moved slightly against his chest, an absent gesture, like she was listening with her whole body and her hands just happened to be part of it.

"After they lost the base," Liam said, "someone else killed them. All of them. And then three of those same people came after me personally." He paused. "I found out who they were."

Camille looked at him. Her fingers had gone still on his chest.

"They’re the Elite Gang," Liam said.

The room went quiet in a different way than it had been quiet.

Camille didn’t say anything for a moment.

Her expression didn’t collapse into panic or run through the visible stages of fear that most people went through when they heard that name for the first time in a context that applied to them.

She just went still.

Her eyes moved off his face to somewhere in the middle distance, unfocused, and she stayed there for a second with whatever was running through her head.

Liam watched her.

’She’s scared,’ he thought. ’She’s doing a good job of not showing it but she’s scared. I can’t blame her. Not everyone hears that name in this context and still wants to—’

"Wow," Camille said.

She said it quietly. Not dramatically. Just the word, sitting in the room by itself.

Her eyes came back to his face.

She reached up with one hand and pushed a nonexistent strand of hair away from her face, a gesture that had nothing to do with her hair and everything to do with needing somewhere to put her hand for a moment.

"A group our size," she said slowly, "being an enemy to something that big." She shook her head once. Small. Controlled. "I can’t believe it."

"I know," Liam said. "It’s a—"

"Is that everything you wanted to tell me?" she said.

Liam looked at her. "Yeah. That’s it."

Camille was quiet for a moment.

Her hand had come back down to his chest and her fingers started moving again, the same absent tracing from before, slower this time. She looked at the wall behind his head and then back at him.

"I’m not going to sit here and pretend that doesn’t scare me," she said. "Because it does." Her voice was even. "But you want to know whether I’m running." She met his eyes directly. "I’m not. Whatever Shay decides I follow. That’s not going to change because the name of whoever we’re dealing with got bigger."

Liam raised an eyebrow. "You knew Shay said yes right?."

"Of course he did," she sighed. The corner of her mouth moved. "Did you even have to convince him?"

"No," Liam said.

"Right." She looked at him. "That’s Shay."

"How is it that you follow whatever he decides that completely?" Liam said. "I understand you guys are a family but still."

Camille looked at him for a moment.

Then she moved.

She didn’t get off his lap, just shifted her weight to one side, reaching back to adjust one of the cushions behind her, making herself more comfortable like she was settling in for something longer than a short answer.

She folded her hands in her lap and looked at the far wall.

"I grew up in a bad house," she said. Her voice had changed slightly. Not softer exactly. Just more direct, the performance quality gone from it completely. "My mom had a habit of bringing men home. Different ones. All the time." Her jaw moved slightly. "Most of them weren’t good people."

She reached up and touched the edge of her bob, running two fingers along the line of it from her ear to her jaw, a slow automatic gesture.

"One night one of them came into my room." She said it the same way she said everything else, evenly, like she had made a decision about how to carry this particular thing a long time ago and had stuck to it. "I woke up and he was already in there." Her fingers dropped from her hair. "He was already on me, his finger already in me. But my knee was in a good position i could hit but it wasn’t hard enough but it counted. And I ran."

Liam said nothing. He just watched her.

"I got out of the house," she continued. "I didn’t go back. I was sixteen and I had nothing and it was late and I was on the street." She looked down at her own hands in her lap for a second and then back up. "I found a spot near one of the buildings on the east side. Sat there. Tried to figure out what I was going to do next. Then it became normal for me to sleep outside. "

She paused.

Her hands moved. She straightened the hem of her blazer at the front, pulling it flat, smoothing it down. Another gesture that had nothing to do with the blazer.

"Some guys found me there one night," she said. "Three of them. And I knew from the second they stopped walking that it was going to be the same thing as the house, just outside instead of inside."

The baseline from the club moved through the walls quietly. The low speaker on the desk continued its unhurried song.

"And then Shay came around the corner," Camille said.

She said it simply. No drama attached to it. Like it was just the next thing that happened.

"He saw what was about to happen and he stepped in." She looked at Liam. "Just him. Three of them and just him. And he dealt with it." A small pause. "And when it was over and I was sitting there trying to stop shaking he looked at me and said—" She stopped. Something moved across her face that was close to a smile but warmer than that. "He said, ’at least you shouldn’t get violated for free.’"

Liam stared at her. "Who says that."

Camille laughed. A real one, short and genuine, her head dropping forward slightly with it. "That’s what I said. I looked at him and I said, that’s the strangest thing anyone has ever said to me." She shook her head. "And he just shrugged. Very Shay."

"Very Shay," Liam agreed.

She looked at the wall again for a moment. "He took me somewhere safe that night. Got me food. Didn’t ask for anything. Didn’t make it weird." Her fingers traced the edge of the blazer lapel slowly. "And over time he helped me figure out what I actually wanted to do. Not what I had to do to survive. What I wanted."

She looked back at Liam directly. "The club was my choice. He made it possible but the choice was mine. Every part of it." She held his eyes. "He gave me a way out of just surviving and into actually living. That’s not something you walk away from when things get difficult."

Liam looked at her for a moment. Something in his chest had moved during the telling of it, quiet and involuntary.

"I’m sorry," he said. "About the house. About what almost happened."

Camille looked at him. Her expression was completely steady. "It’s in the past," she said. "I don’t carry it the same way anymore." She tilted her head. "But I hope that makes it clear. I’m in. All the way. You don’t have to wonder about me."

"I wasn’t wondering," Liam said.

She looked at him. "Good."

The room settled around them. The music from the desk moved through the quiet. Outside the office door the club continued doing what it did, the bass finding its way through the wall in slow consistent waves.

Camille looked at him for a long moment.

Then the slow deliberate smile came back.

"Okay," she said, her voice dropping back into that lower register, the even professional quality from the last few minutes folding itself away neatly. "That’s cleared." She straightened up on his lap, her hands coming back to his chest, her weight resettling. She looked at him from close range. "Time to complete your promise."

Liam smiled.