Chapter 7: The Aftermath
The penthouse foyer felt colder in the morning light. The marble floor, usually pristine, now seemed clinical. Two men in cheap suits—one bald with a spider-veined nose, the other young with a nervous tie—stood inside the open door, badges held up like talismans.
“Bruce Van Oppen?” the bald one asked, his voice gravelly. He didn’t wait for confirmation. “I’m Detective Cowell. This is Detective Brenner. We’d like to ask you some questions regarding an assault at Mélisse restaurant last night.”
From the doorway to the living room, Camille watched, her silk robe drawn tightly around her. Lena stood half-hidden behind her, dressed in one of Bruce’s t-shirts, her hair a wild, beautiful mess. Bruce’s posture didn’t change. He stood in his own robe, facing them, his hands loose at his sides. The split on his knuckles was dark, a scabbed-over lie.
“The answer is no,” Bruce said. His voice was flat, without hostility. A simple statement of fact.
Detective Cowell blinked. “Sir, this is a felony assault investigation. A man is in the hospital with a shattered nasal septum, a broken zygomatic arch, and a severe concussion. He claims you attacked him without provocation.”
“He’s lying,” Lena said, stepping forward. Her chin was up, her amber eyes blazing. “He grabbed me. He put his fucking hand on my ass and squeezed. Bruce was defending me.”
Brenner, the younger one, scribbled in a small notepad. Cowell’s gaze lingered on Lena, taking in her attire, her proximity to Bruce, the protective stance of the older woman beside her. His expression didn’t change. “We’d like to hear your account, Mr. Van Oppen. Down at the station.”
“Do you have a warrant?” Bruce asked.
“We don’t need a warrant to ask questions.”
“And I just told you I won’t be answering any. You can contact my lawyer.” Bruce took a single step forward. He wasn’t a tall man, but the width of his shoulders in the robe seemed to fill the foyer. The motion was subtle, but the detectives instinctively took a half-step back. “Now, please remove yourselves from my property.”
Cowell’s eyes hardened. “This is a serious matter.”
“Which is why my lawyer will be involved.” Bruce’s tone left no room. “You have no witness statements from the restaurant beyond the perpetrator and his friend? No independent corroboration? You came here first thing in the morning based on the word of a drunk who committed sexual battery. Your case is already thin. Don’t make it flimsy.”
The bald detective’s jaw worked. He’d expected bluster, fear, or arrogant defiance. This calm, procedural dismissal threw him. He glanced past Bruce at the two women. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Through my attorney,” Bruce said, and closed the door in their faces. The click of the heavy lock echoed in the sudden silence.
Camille let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Jesus.”
“They’ll be back,” Bruce said, turning. His eyes were normal, tired. “With a warrant. Today.”
The warrant arrived at three seventeen p.m. It authorized Bruce’s arrest and a search of the premises for “clothing worn during the alleged assault.” Two uniformed officers accompanied Cowell and Brenner this time. The mood was different.Official. Ominous.
“Bruce Van Oppen, you are under arrest for the felony assault of Marcus Rennard,” Cowell intoned. “You have the right to remain silent…”
Bruce listened, his face a mask. He’d put on dark jeans and a black cashmere sweater. He looked like he was going to a board meeting, not jail. He kissed Camille hard on the mouth, then Lena. “Call Mark Silver,” he said, his voice low. “Don’t answer any questions. Don’t let them in the bedroom or the study unless they specifically list it on the warrant. Watch them.”
He held Lena’s gaze a beat longer. “He touched you. Remember that. Say nothing else.”
They cuffed his hands behind his back. The cold metal bit into his wrists. The sight of it—Bruce, her rock, being led away in cuffs—punched the air from Camille’s lungs. Lena made a small, wounded sound and took a step forward, but Camille’s hand shot out, gripping her wrist, holding her back.
The search was a slow, violating drift. They went through the trash. They looked at the shoes by the door. One officer opened the closet in the foyer. Cowell’s eyes kept drifting toward the open floor plan, the expensive art, the sheer, arrogant wealth of the space. His resentment was a scent in the air.
“That portrait,” Brenner said, stopping in front of the large black-framed painting of Camille. “It’s… intense.”
Camille’s painted eyes, dark and knowing, stared out, a silent guardian. “My husband is an architect,” Camille said, her voice tightly controlled. “He appreciates clean lines.”
They didn’t find the sweater from last night. Lena had bundled it, along with Bruce’s trousers and their own dresses, into a garment bag and shoved it to the very back of Camille’s walk-in closet, behind years of formal gowns. The warrant didn’t specify the master bedroom closet, and Cowell, after a glance at the king-sized bed where the sheets were still tangled from their morning wake-up, didn’t push it. The search felt perfunctory, a box to check. They left forty minutes later, leaving the front door unlocked and the feeling of grimy fingerprints on the atmosphere.
The holding cell was a concrete cube smelling of ammonia, stale sweat, and despair. Bruce sat on a steel bench bolted to the wall, his cuffs now in front of him. He didn’t speak to the drunk man weeping in the corner or the kid pacing like a caged animal. He closed his eyes and did something he’d been practicing. He listened.
He filtered out the human noises. Past the clanging doors, the murmur of the precinct bullpen, the ringing phones. He listened to the building itself. The groan of stressed rebar in a concrete pillar two floors up. The erratic hum of a failing fluorescent ballast in the corridor. The rush of water in pipes deep within the walls. It was a symphony of decay and strain. It was calming. It reminded him he was more than this cage.
His lawyer, Mark Silver, arrived just after seven p.m. Silver was a compact man in a suit that cost more than Detective Cowell’s car. His hair was silver, his demeanor ice. He got Bruce moved to a private interview room—a windowless box with a scarred table and two chairs.
“They have the victim’s statement, his friend’s corroboration, and a security still from the restaurant lobby showing you leaving with two women,” Silver said, placing his briefcase on the table. “The DA is leaning into it. The victim’s father is a big donor to the Police Foundation. They want to make an example of a rich guy in Brentwood playing vigilante.”
Bruce listened, his gaze fixed on a water stain on the ceiling tile. “He sexually assaulted Lena. He grabbed her. Hard.”
“She’s your…?”
“My fiancé.”
Silver didn’t blink. “And the other woman is?”
“My wife.”
The lawyer was quiet for a moment. He nodded, just once. “Alright. The restaurant staff is being coy. The maître d’ is afraid of a lawsuit. Our private investigator has already spoken to two waiters who saw the initial interaction, saw the man approach your table, saw him become belligerent. One specifically saw the grab. He’s scared, but he’ll talk. The security footage from the dining room itself is key. The restaurant is refusing to release it without a subpoena. They’re covering their ass. We’re getting that subpoena. Until then, they’ve charged you with aggravated battery. You’ll be arraigned tomorrow morning. You can post bail. It’ll be high.”
“I don’t care what it is,” Bruce said. His eyes finally met Silver’s. They were clear, focused, unnervingly calm. “I acted to stop a sexual assault in progress. That’s it. That’s the entire story. Tell them to subpoena the footage. I want this man charged.”
“He will be. But they want you more. Your eyes… the friend said something about your eyes being ‘not right.’ Like an animal’s. They think you’re on something. They’ll want a blood draw.”
A cold smile touched Bruce’s lips. “Let them. My blood is clean.”
When Silver left, the silence in the room was heavier. Bruce leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. He thought of Lena’s face when the hand had grabbed her—the shock, then the swift, hot fury. He thought of the crack of bone under his fist. It had felt good.Righteous. A perfectly tuned physical response to a moral wrong. The golden coil inside him had approved. It still did.
He was released on two hundred thousand dollars bail at eleven a.m. the next day. Camille and Lena were waiting for him outside the courthouse, a black town car idling at the curb. They didn’t speak in the car. Camille held his hand, her grip ferocious. Lena sat close, her thigh pressed against his, her head on his shoulder. The driver took them home.
The penthouse felt different. It was no longer just a sanctuary; it was a fortress that had been breached. The air was sharp with unresolved tension. They stood in the living room, the city sprawling beyond the windows, a world that had just tried to cage him.
Lena turned to him first. Her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, but dry. “I want to kill him,” she said, her voice low and vibrating. “I want to find him and hurt him.”
Camille walked to the bar, pouring three glasses of water. Her movements were precise, controlled. “The lawyer says we wait. That the system grinds.”
“Fuck the system,” Lena spat. “It locked Bruce up. It believed that piece of shit.”
“And Bruce is out,” Camille said, handing him a glass. “Because the system also has bail. We play this smart.”
Bruce took the glass. He looked from his wife’s pragmatic fury to his fiancé’s volatile rage. The energy between them was jagged, a live wire sparking. The fear from the arrest, the helplessness, the violation of the search—it was all there, swirling, seeking an outlet. He knew where this was going. He felt the pull of it himself. A need to reclaim, to dominate, to feel something other than the cold touch of the law.
He set the glass down, untouched. “Strip,” he said.
The command hung in the air. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t a suggestion.
Camille’s eyes met his. She held his gaze for a three-count, then her fingers went to the buttons of her blouse. She didn’t look away as she undid them, let the silk slide from her shoulders, pooled it at her feet. She unhooked her bra, let her full breasts free. She stepped out of her trousers, her pantries, until she stood naked before him, her body a lush, defiant statement.
Lena was faster. She pulled the t-shirt over her head in one violent motion. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her small, perfect breasts heaved with her breath, her nipples tight. She kicked her leggings off, standing pale and furious and magnificent.
“On your knees,” Bruce said. “Both of you.”
They sank to the floor in front of him, on the expensive, minimalist rug. The morning light streamed over their bare backs. He unbuttoned his own jeans, pushed them down along with his briefs. His cock was already hard, thick and jutting from the ordeal of the last twenty-four hours. It wasn’t about pleasure. It was about power. Theirs and his.
“Open,” he told Camille.
She leaned forward, taking him into her mouth, her lips stretching around his girth. She took him deep, her throat working, her eyes watering. He watched her, his hand going to her dark hair, not guiding, just gripping. He could feel the vibration of a sob she refused to release in the muscles of her jaw.
“You,” he said to Lena, his voice gritty. “Behind her. Make her come. Now.”
Lena’s eyes flashed. She moved behind Camille on her knees. Her hands slid around Camille’s waist, cupping her breasts, pinching the nipples hard. Camille moaned around Bruce’s cock, the sound a desperate, muffled thing. Lena’s hand plunged between Camille’s thighs from behind. She was ruthless. She found Camille’s clit, slick from arousal and stress, and rubbed it in fast, tight circles. Then she shoved two fingers inside her, fucking her with them, her palm grinding against Camille’s ass.
Camille’s body bucked. Her mouth grew sloppy on Bruce’s cock as pleasure tore through her. She came with a guttural cry, her cunt clenching around Lena’s fingers, her throat spasming around Bruce. He felt it all, the detailed, violent cascade of her orgasm through the connection of flesh. He pulled his cock from her mouth, shiny with her spit.
“Switch,” he growled.
They moved like a practiced, frantic ballet. Lena scrambled around, presenting herself to him on her hands and knees, her ass in the air, the perfect, taut curves he’d broken a man’s face for. Camille, still shuddering from her climax, got behind Lena, her mouth latching onto the back of Lena’s neck, sucking a mark there as her hands gripped Lena’s hips.
Bruce positioned himself at Lena’s entrance. He didn’t enter slowly. He slammed into her in one brutal stroke, burying himself to the hilt. Lena screamed, her back arching, her fingers clawing at the rug. She was soaking wet, her body accepting the invasion with a hungry, welcoming pain.
“Fuck her,” Bruce gritted out to Camille. “Make her scream.”
Camille’s hand snaked under Lena, her fingers finding Lena’s swollen clit. She matched Bruce’s pounding rhythm with her fingers, a relentless counterpoint. Lena was being split open from both ends, filled and rubbed into a shattering precipice.
“He touched this,” Bruce snarled, each word a thrust. “His filthy hand. On this ass.” He brought his own hand down on Lena’s cheek in a sharp, stinging slap. The sound was explosive. Lena cried out, but she pushed back against him, begging for more. “It’s mine. You’re mine. I break anyone who fucking forgets that.”
“Yours!” Lena shrieked, her voice breaking. “God, Bruce, please…”
He felt his orgasm building, a tsunami of reclaimed agency. He pistoned into her, the slapping sounds of their flesh meeting filling the sunlit room. Camille was whispering filth into Lena’s ear, her fingers a blur.
“Come for us, mija,” Camille chanted. “Soak his cock. Show him who you belong to.”
Lena shattered. Her orgasm ripped through her, a series of violent contractions that squeezed Bruce’s cock like a vise. Her screams were raw, unfiltered, torn from the core of her. That was all it took. Bruce drove deep one last time and let go, erupting inside her with a roar that felt ripped from his chest. He emptied himself in hot, pulsing jets, marking her, claiming her all over again in the one way the law couldn’t touch.
He stayed inside her until he was soft, both of them collapsed on the rug, breathing in ragged unison. Camille curled around Lena’s back, kissing the red handprint on her ass, then the love bite on her neck.
Later, showered and wrapped in robes, they sat around the kitchen island. The lawyer had called. The subpoena for the restaurant footage was being expedited. The waiters were giving formal statements.
“The DA will drop the charges,” Silver had said, his voice tinny on the speakerphone. “But they’ll want something. A plea to a misdemeanor. Disorderly conduct.”
“No,” Bruce had said, staring out at the city. “I plead to nothing. I was stopping a crime. We go to trial if we have to.”
Now, stirring a cup of tea, Camille looked at him. “Is it worth it? The trial? The exposure?”
“Yes,” Lena answered for him, her voice quiet but steel-hard. “It’s worth everything. What he did… what Bruce did…” She touched her lower back, where the ghost of a handprint might have been. “It has to mean something.”
Bruce looked at his hands. The knuckles were bruised, the split scabbed over. He felt the strange, quiet hum inside him, the coiled potential that had sparked gold in his eyes. It wasn’t just for fighting. It was for seeing clearly. And he saw, with absolute clarity, that this fight had just begun. The man in the hospital, the detectives, the system—they were just the opening moves. The real battle was for the truth of their life, their strange, beautiful, and now legally dangerous union.
The wedding was in twenty-five days.
He’d be damned if he was getting married as a convicted criminal.
The phone rang as evening bled into the penthouse, purpling the skyline. It was Mark Silver. His voice crackled through the speaker, strained. “They won’t release the dining room footage,” he said.
Bruce stood at the window, his back to the room. “Why?”
“The restaurant’s insurance. Their legal team is citing liability and patron privacy. They’ve produced the lobby footage. That’s it. Our subpoena is being fought.”
Lena, curled on the sofa, sat up straight. “So it’s his word against ours.”
“And the two waiters,” Silver corrected, but the doubt was there. “Their statements are good.Strong. But the DA’s office is… politically motivated. They’re offering a deal again. Disturbing the peace. No jail. A fine.”
“And a permanent record,” Camille said, her voice flat from the kitchen island. She was slicing an apple with methodical precision. “A conviction.”
“A misdemeanor,” Silver countered. “It’s a slap on the wrist.”
Bruce turned from the window. The low light caught the planes of his face, making him look carved from stone. “It’s an admission of guilt. Which means he walks. No consequences for putting his hands on her. Is he being charged?”
A pause, papers shuffling. “Not at this time. The friend has recanted his statement about the initial contact. Now he claims they were just ‘being friendly’ and you ‘snapped.’”
Lena made a sharp, disgusted sound. She launched off the couch, pacing the length of the living room, a caged flame. “Friendly. He fucking mauled me.”
“I know,” Silver said, and sighed. It was the sound of a man watching a chess game slip away. “Without the footage, it’s messy. A trial is a coin toss. And a very public one. The DA knows that. They’re banking on you taking the deal to avoid the spectacle.”
“The spectacle,” Bruce repeated, the word tasting of ash. He watched Lena pace, her bare feet silent on the rug. She was vibrating with a clean, righteous fury. He felt an answering vibration within himself, that coiled, attentive presence. It recognized a threat to the nest. It did not like plea deals. It wanted confrontation. Resolution.
“We need leverage,” Bruce said, his mind clicking through scenarios with a new, cold efficiency. “Something on the restaurant owner. On the detectives. On Marcus Rennard.”
“I’m a lawyer, Bruce, not a private investigator,” Silver said, but his tone was considering.
“Hire one. The best. I don’t care what it costs. Dig. I want everything. His business, his father’s donations, his arrest record. Everything.”
After the call ended, the silence was thick. Camille pushed a plate of sliced apple toward the center of the island. “This is becoming a war.”
“It was always a war,” Lena said, stopping her pacing. She leaned against the back of the sofa, her arms crossed over her chest. “The minute he decided we were his entertainment. The war just got official.”
Bruce walked to her. He didn’t touch her. He stood close, inhaling the scent of her—jasmine soap and unresolved anger. “I won’t plead.We fight. All the way.”
“What does that look like?” Camille asked, coming to stand beside them, a solid, warm presence.
“It looks like winning,” Bruce said, and for the first time since the arrest, a real, dangerous smile touched his lips. Not a happy smile. A predator’s smile. “We have resources they can’t comprehend. We’ll use them.”
That night, the energy between them was not the frantic reclaiming of the afternoon. It was slower.Deliberate. Purposeful. They had showered, and now stood in the soft lamplight of the bedroom, naked. They looked at each other not just as lovers, but as allies. Co-conspirators.
“Come here,” Camille said to Lena, her voice a low command.
Lena walked to her. Camille’s hands settled on Lena’s hips, turning her gently, so Lena’s back was to Camille’s front. Camille’s fingers trailed up Lena’s spine, then gripped her shoulders, applying a firm pressure. “You’re holding it all in here. Every bit of it.”
She began to knead the tight muscles, her thumbs digging into the knots along Lena’s shoulders. Lena let her head fall forward with a groan that was half pain, half profound relief. Bruce watched, leaning against the dresser. The sight was intimate, nurturing, deeply erotic.
Camille’s hands moved lower, massaging the small of Lena’s back, then the full, perfect swell of her ass. Her touch became less clinical, more possessive. She spread her palms over the curves, squeezing, learning the topography of the body her husband had defended with his fists.
“He wanted this,” Camille murmured into Lena’s ear, her voice hot. “That pathetic boy. He saw this and thought he could take a piece of it. Thought it was for him.”
Lena shivered, her breath catching. “It’s not.”
“It’s mine,” Camille whispered, and her hand slid around Lena’s hip, diving between her legs from behind. Lena gasped, her legs parting instinctively. Camille’s fingers found her already wet, the slickness a betrayal of her simmering anger.“See? Your body knows who owns it. Even when your mind is furious.”
Camille worked her with a knowing, relentless rhythm. Two fingers slid inside Lena, curling upward, while her thumb pressed circles on her clit. Lena braced her hands on the footboard of the bed, her knuckles whitening. She pushed back against Camille’s hand, fucking herself on the invading fingers.
Bruce moved then. He came up behind Camille, his body aligning with hers, his cock hard and pressing against the cleft of her ass. His hands came around her, one covering her breast, pinching her nipple, the other joining hers between Lena’s legs. His fingers intertwined with Camille’s, both of them working Lena now, a dual assault of sensation.
“You feel us?” Bruce growled, his mouth on Camille’s neck. “Both of us inside you?”
Lena could only nod, her voice gone, her body a frantic wire strung between their four hands. The orgasm that hit her was less an explosion and more a total system failure. Her vision greyed at the edges. Her knees buckled. A silent, open-mouthed cry tore from her as she convulsed, her cunt clenching wildly around the tangle of their fingers.
They caught her, lowering her to the plush rug. She lay there, panting, spent. Camille and Bruce stood over her, their own need a palpable heat in the air. Bruce turned Camille to face him. He kissed her, a deep, consuming kiss that tasted of shared purpose. Then he walked her backward until her calves hit the edge of the bed.
“On your back,” he said. “I want to watch your face.”
Camille complied, lying back, her dark hair fanning on the duvet. She opened her legs, offering herself. Bruce positioned himself at her entrance. He didn’t rush. He pushed into her with a slow, inexorable pressure, seating himself fully, watching her eyes dilate, her lips part. He began to move, a deep, measured stroke that hit the back of her womb with every thrust.
Camille’s hands flew to his ass, pulling him deeper, urging him harder. “Don’t be gentle,” she breathed, her eyes locked on his. “I’m not fragile. Fuck the anger out. Fuck the fear out.”
Bruce’s control shattered. He drove into her, his hips pounding against hers, the bedframe slamming into the wall with a rhythmic, protesting thud. He was a piston, a machine of pure, focused intent. Each thrust was a silent vow: I will protect what is mine. I will break what threatens it.
Camille came first, a sharp, surprised cry as her body arched off the bed, her heels digging into his back. He felt her fluttering around him, a hot, wet fist. It pushed him over the edge. He buried himself to the root and let go, a groan ripping from his chest as he emptied himself into her, jet after hot jet, a physical declaration of permanence.
He collapsed beside her, his breathing ragged. Lena had crawled onto the bed. She curled against Camille’s side, her head on Camille’s shoulder, one hand resting on Bruce’s heaving chest. They lay like that, a sticky, exhausted tangle, as the digital clock on the nightstand ticked over to midnight.
Twenty-four days until the wedding.
Two days later, the private investigator delivered a file. His name was Aris Thorne, an ex-intelligence contractor with a disconcertingly calm demeanor. He sat in their study, the unopened box of lubricant and the silk scarves now stored away, replaced by his sleek laptop.
“Marcus Rennard,” Aris began, his voice devoid of inflection. “His father, Lawrence Rennard, owns a chain of automotive parts suppliers. Major police union donor. Marcus has two prior arrests. One for possession with intent. Charges dropped. One for assault at a bar. Charges pled down to community service.”
He tapped a key. An image flickered on his screen: security footage from a different restaurant, grainy and timestamped from six months prior. It showed Marcus, drunk, shoving a woman against a wall. Her face was a mask of fear. “This was never reported,” Aris said. “The woman was paid off. The restaurant manager is a friend of the father.”
Bruce felt the coil inside him tighten, a cold satisfaction. “Weaponize it.”
“There’s more,” Aris continued. “The owner of Mélisse. He has a… side business. A hidden gambling room in the back, for high rollers. Unlicensed. He pays off a specific lieutenant at the precinct to look the other way. Detective Cowell reports to this lieutenant.”
Camille leaned forward, her eyes sharp. “So Cowell isn’t just doing his job. He’s protecting his boss’s revenue stream by making this go away quietly. By putting the onus on Bruce.”
“Exactly,” Aris said. He closed the laptop. “You have two paths. Go public with the assault footage we just retrieved, expose the pattern, and put pressure on the DA. Or, apply pressure more directly. A quiet word. Let the lieutenant know you’re aware of his arrangement. He’ll pull Cowell off. The DA’s office, without police pressure, will likely drop the case to avoid the nuisance.”
Lena spoke from the doorway, where she’d been listening. “Do both.”
They all looked at her. Her face was calm, her amber eyes holding a flat, ruthless light Bruce had never seen there before. “Leak the old assault video anonymously to a crime blogger. Let the court of public opinion start. Then have your lawyer make the quiet call. Give them a way out that looks like they’re being ethical, not threatened.”
Aris nodded, a flicker of approval in his eyes. “That is… efficient.”
“We’re getting married,” Lena said, simply. “I won’t have this shadow on it. I want him destroyed.”
Three hours after Mark Silver’s “quiet word” with the police lieutenant, Detective Cowell called. His tone was different. Choked. “Mr. Van Oppen. We’ve… re-evaluated the evidence. The witness statements are compelling. We’ll be recommending the DA not pursue charges. We’re also reopening the investigation into Mr. Rennard’s actions that night for possible sexual battery.”
Bruce held the phone, watching the sunset paint the sky in streaks of orange and violet. “And the footage from Mélisse?”
A long pause. “The restaurant has… located the relevant footage. It will be made available to the District Attorney.”
Bruce hung up without another word. He looked at Camille and Lena, who were watching him, their faces etched with anxious hope. “It’s done,” he said.
The release was a physical thing. Camille slumped into a chair, a hand over her face. Lena let out a jagged breath, then walked to Bruce, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her face in his chest. He held her, feeling the slight tremble in her shoulders.
That night, they ordered ridiculous amounts of food from the most expensive restaurant they could think of, a place Mélisse could never hope to be. They ate off fine china in their robes, laughing, the tension bleeding away with every glass of champagne. The relief was dizzying, a drug.
Later, sated and tipsy, they lay in a pile in front of the fireplace. Lena traced the now-fading bruise on Bruce’s knuckle. “The wedding is in,” she paused, calculating, “twenty-two days. We have a cake tasting tomorrow. And the florist.”
“And my mother arrives in a week,” Camille added, a note of familiar dread coloring her voice. “She will have opinions. Many, many opinions.”
“About the three of us?” Lena asked.
“About everything,” Camille sighed. “The flowers, the food, my dress, your dress, the fact that we’re not getting married in a Catholic church. But yes, mostly about the three of us.”
Bruce stared into the flames. The immediate legal threat was gone, but the world had shifted. They were not just a secret triad anymore. They were a target. They had made powerful enemies today, even in their victory. Lawrence Rennard would not forget. The corrupt lieutenant would not forget.
He felt the golden coil, dormant now, a sleeping watchdog at the base of his spine. It had woken for a fight and been denied a true finish.It was restless. It wanted to know what was next.
“Let her have her opinions,” Bruce said finally, pulling them both closer. The firelight danced over their skin. “The only one that matters is happening at the Getty in twenty-two days. We say ‘I do.’ All of us. That’s the only statement we need to make.”
Outside, the city glittered, indifferent and full of hidden eyes. Inside, they held each other, a temporary fortress against the gathering storm. The fight was over. The war, he knew, was just beginning.