Chapter 1
Cami
The heavy mahogany door of Room 612 clicked shut, the automatic lock sliding into place with a sharp, final metallic thud.
My knees buckled instantly.
I hit the plush carpeted floor, my heavy camera bag slamming down beside me, my fingers digging into the fabric of my coat as the first shuddering, violent sob tore through my throat. I pressed my palm flat over my mouth to stifle the sound, my body shaking uncontrollably against the cold mahogany of the doorframe.
I hadn’t cried on the jet.
For two agonizing hours in the air, I had sat in the back row by the window, staring blankly into the dark sky while the murmur of the team staff echoed down the aisle. Knox had tried to walk down the narrow carpeted passage toward my seat three separate times during the flight. I hadn’t looked up. I hadn’t raised my voice. I had simply turned my shoulder to the wall, letting the icy, impenetrable wall around my heart do the talking until he was forced back to the front cabin by Elena.
Now, in the silence of an empty hotel room in Belgium, the dam broke completely.
Every touch from nights ago- his hands holding my hips through thin silk, his dark eyes burning into mine, his rough voice growling I don’t break promises to you-felt like liquid fire pouring over raw, open wounds. He had sent me away to Tuscany under the guise of an assignment just to clear the pit wall. He had hidden me like an embarrassing secret so he could stand on a floodlit runway in Milan and link his arm through Giulia Bellini’s.
I reached up with trembling, cold fingers, pulling my vibrating phone out of my coat pocket.
The screen was flooded with media notifications, news alerts from motorsport blogs showing the polished photo of Eric Vance and Giulia Bellini, and twelve missed calls from one person.
I ignored Knox’s name completely, my thumb hitting the speed dial for the only person in the world who knew the truth about who I really was.
It rang once.
“Cami?" Elodie’s voice came through the speaker, sharp, breathless, and laced with immediate panic. “Oh my god, Cami! I just saw the press release on Twitter-tell me it’s a mistake. Tell me that headline is fake!"
Hearing her voice broke what was left of my composure. A wet, broken gasp escaped my throat, and I pulled my knees tightly against my chest, resting my forehead against my denim-clad knees.
“It’s not fake," I choked out, my voice thick and hoarse from crying. “I... I saw them, Elodie. At the airfield in Milan. She was wearing a ring."
“That bastard," Elodie swore violently, her voice shaking with pure, unadulterated fury. “That absolute, arrogant, spineless bastard! After everything he said to you? After two years of ruining your life, he pulls a corporate stunt with an Italian heiress?!"
“He used me," I whispered, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. “He held me in that hotel room... he looked me in the eyes... and then he benched me so I wouldn’t stand in the way of his team’s funding. I can’t do this, Elodie. I’m packing my bags. I’m taking the first morning train out of Spa. I can’t look at his face every single day in that garage."
“Cami, stop. Listen to me," Elodie said, her tone suddenly shifting from anger to a tight, urgent seriousness. “Did you look at your team contract before you start packing?"
I blinked back hot tears, wiping my wet cheeks with the back of my sleeve. “What?"
“The exclusive photography clause you signed with Elena’s agency in June," Elodie pressed, her voice clear and firm over the line. “The early-termination penalty. If you walk away from the team before the end of the season without a medical exemption, you forfeit your remaining media earnings and you owe the firm forty thousand euros in breach-of-contract damages."
A cold, sickening dread settled into my stomach.
Forty thousand euros.
My parents had stripped my trust fund three years ago. They had erased my name from the family accounts, left me with nothing.. I lived with a forged name, a couple of camera lenses, and a mountain of legal debts from the Boston fallout. I didn’t have forty thousand euros. I barely had enough saved in my private account to cover my equipment insurance for next season.
“I don’t have the money," I rasped, my hand clutching the carpet beneath me.
“I know you don’t, sweetie," Elodie said softly, her voice full of fierce empathy. “And that’s why you are not letting that man ruin your livelihood twice. He stole your trust. He took your past. Do not let him take your future, your career, and your financial freedom."
“How am I supposed to walk into that garage tomorrow?" I cried out softly, a fresh wave of tears spilling over my lashes. “How am I supposed to stand on the pit wall, hold a camera, and watch him analyze telemetry when the man I love is engaged to someone else? How am I supposed to act like my heart isn’t shattered into a million pieces?!"
“You cry right now," Elodie commanded, her voice ringing out like steel. “You sob, you scream into a pillow, and you get every single tear out of your system tonight in that hotel room."
She paused, letting the silence hang between us for a long, powerful beat.
“And then tomorrow morning," Elodie continued softly, every word deliberate and lethal, “you put on your black leather jacket, you grab your camera, and you walk into that paddock like a woman made of iron. You do not show him a single crack. You do not give him a single tear. You treat him like a complete stranger. You call him Mr. Vance. You take his team’s money, you build your portfolio, and you make him watch you become untouchable."
I sat in the dark room, listening to the heavy, steady rhythm of my own breathing.
The pain in my chest didn’t disappear; it was still a gaping, bleeding wound. But under the grief, something cold, hard, and unfamiliar began to take root in the soil of my heart.
An armor of ice.
“Be strong in public, Cami," Elodie whispered softly. “Let him burn in the dark."
“Be strong in public," I echoed, my voice surprisingly steady as I wiped the last wet trace of tears from my face.
I ended the call, laid my phone face-down on the nightstand, and stood up on shaky, determined legs. I walked over to the bathroom mirror, staring at my reflection under the harsh white lights—my dark eyes red-rimmed, my pale skin flushed, but my chin lifted high.
Knox thought I was the same fragile girl he could leave in Bosto and hold in Monza whenever it suited his schedule.
He was wrong.
