Chapter 8 - The Night Damian Finally Asked
Three days after Pier Nine, Camille resigned.
She did it at 8:12 on a Monday morning.
She walked into Damian’s office wearing a navy blazer, charcoal skirt, and flat black shoes, placed a single sheet of paper on his desk, and stood with her hands folded in front of her.
Damian looked at the paper.
Then at her.
“No.”
Camille blinked.
“That is not how resignations work.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then why did you say no?”
“Instinct.”
“Control issue.”
“Possibly.”
She waited.
He picked up the letter.
His eyes moved over the first paragraph.
“This is effective immediately.”
“Yes.”
“You gave no notice.”
“My mother was kidnapped by your uncle after your cousin stole jewelry containing evidence of a criminal conspiracy from my ear. I assumed Human Resources would waive the customary two weeks.”
Damian’s mouth twitched.
Camille continued.
“I’m not leaving the investigation. And I’m not leaving because I’m angry.”
“Are you still angry?”
“Yes.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m leaving because if anything happens between us after this, I never want to wonder whether I said yes because you signed my paycheck.”
Damian went completely still.
Camille felt her pulse in her throat.
There.
She had said it.
Not that something would happen.
That if it did, she wanted to meet him as an equal.
Damian set down the paper very carefully.
“What will you do?”
“I’ve already spoken with the independent counsel working with federal prosecutors. They need someone who understands the foundation records and Moretti corporate structures.”
“You took a job with the people investigating me?”
“Consulting role.”
“That is deeply disloyal.”
“I learned from the best.”
He leaned back in his chair.
For a few seconds he simply looked at her.
Then he signed the bottom of her resignation.
Camille had not expected the ache that caused.
Twenty-two months reduced to ink.
Damian stood.
“Anything else, Ms. Rhodes?”
The formality hurt more than she wanted it to.
“No, Mr. Moretti.”
She turned toward the door.
“Camille.”
She stopped.
“When does your consulting contract start?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Then for the next sixteen hours, you technically have no employer.”
She looked back.
Damian came around the desk.
His face was unreadable again, but she knew him too well now.
He was nervous.
Damian Moretti was nervous.
“Have dinner with me.”
Her heart stumbled.
“Dinner?”
“Yes.”
“As in a meeting?”
“No.”
“A strategy session?”
“No.”
“An interrogation about my consulting rate?”
“Camille.”
She smiled.
“Ask properly.”
His gaze held hers.
“Have dinner with me tonight. Not as my secretary. Not because I’m ordering you. Because I want to spend time with you and because I have been trying not to ask for more than a year.”
Camille let the silence stretch.
He deserved at least five seconds of suffering.
“Yes.”
His shoulders lowered.
“Seven?”
“Seven thirty.”
“I said seven.”
“And I don’t work for you anymore.”
Damian stared.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
It changed his entire face.
Camille nearly regretted resigning only because she had apparently missed twenty-two months of that smile.
At seven thirty, Damian did not take her to one of the private restaurants he owned or a dining room where half the staff would tremble if he frowned.
He took her to a small Italian place in Little Italy with twelve tables, red-checkered napkins, and an owner who slapped him on the shoulder and called him “Vittorio’s stubborn boy.”
Camille laughed so hard she had to sit down.
“You brought me somewhere people aren’t afraid of you.”
Damian looked offended.
“Maria is afraid of no one.”
Maria shouted from the kitchen, “Because I remember when you cried over a bee sting!”
Camille covered her mouth.
Damian closed his eyes.
“This was a mistake.”
It was the best dinner she had ever had.
They did not talk about Salvatore for the first hour.
They talked about ordinary things.
Camille told him she had once wanted to become a journalist until she realized she hated chasing people for quotes. Damian admitted he secretly read detective novels on flights and always guessed the killer too early.
He told her he hated pears.
She told him that was irrational.
He said pears were structurally dishonest fruit.
She laughed until tears came.
For two hours, they were not a mafia boss and the daughter of a murdered accountant.
They were simply a man and a woman learning all the things crisis had never left room for.
The conversation eventually turned to the question both of them had avoided.
“What happens to Moretti Holdings?” Camille asked.
Damian set down his fork.
“Which part?”
“The part everyone in Baltimore whispers about.”
He did not pretend not to understand.
“My father left businesses that were legal, businesses that lived in gray areas, and businesses that were not legal at all.”
“And you?”
“I shut down some. Sold some. Kept a few longer than I should have because they were profitable and because I told myself I could control the damage.”
Camille appreciated that he did not polish the answer.
“Did people get hurt?”
“Yes.”
The word sat between them.
“Because of you?”
“Sometimes.”
Camille looked down at her hands.
This was the part no romance could erase.
Damian was not a misunderstood businessman unfairly given a frightening reputation. He had made choices she would never have made. Some of them were ugly.
“I need you to understand something,” she said. “Loving you cannot mean pretending those choices were fine.”
“I know.”
“And I will not become the woman who explains away everything because the man doing it is kind to her.”
“I would hate you if you did.”
She looked up. “No, you wouldn’t.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “No. But I would deserve the disappointment.”
Camille leaned back. “What are you going to do?”
“Finish cleaning it out.”
“For me?”
“No.”
The answer surprised her.
Damian continued. “You can be one reason I stop lying to myself about what I inherited. But if I do it only for you, then the first time we fight I get to pretend morality was a favor I did for my girlfriend.”
Camille stared.
“That may be the healthiest thing you have ever said.”
“I’m having an unusual week.”
She smiled.
He reached across the table, then stopped before touching her hand.
“May I?”
Camille’s chest tightened.
She turned her palm upward.
“Yes.”
His fingers closed around hers.
There was something more intimate about that small permission than there had been in the dance at the gala.
No audience. No jealousy. No crisis.
Just practice.
“Your mother gave me a lecture,” Damian said.
Camille tried to look innocent. “Did she?”
“She has strong opinions.”
“She usually does.”
“About me.”
“Those are probably stronger.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You know something.”
“I know many things.”
“That is what made you dangerous as a secretary.”
“Former secretary.”
Damian lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’m beginning to understand the distinction.”
After dinner, Damian drove her back to the Moretti building because she had left a box of personal belongings in the office.
The top floor was empty.
Camille packed photographs, notebooks, three pens Damian had stolen and denied stealing, and a ceramic mug that read I SURVIVED ANOTHER MEETING THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL.
Damian leaned against the desk watching her.
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“What?”
“Taking my pens.”
“They were mine first.”
“Unproven.”
She put the last one into the box.
Then she saw the ballroom folder from the gala.
The plum dress night.
Everything had changed in less than a week.
Camille touched the folder.
“Do you remember the question you never answered?”
Damian’s expression shifted.
“Which one?”
“Will other men be asking you to dance tonight?” she reminded him. “I asked if you planned to ask me first.”
He straightened.
Camille’s breath caught.
Damian crossed to a small speaker near the windows and turned on music from his phone.
Soft piano filled the office.
Then he walked back to her.
No command.
No assumption.
He held out his hand.
“Camille Rhodes, will you dance with me?”
Her eyes stung.
“Yes.”
She placed her hand in his.
They moved slowly between the desk and the windows, Baltimore glittering beneath them.
His hand settled at her waist.
This time there was no gala crowd.
No Julian.
No chandelier.
No gunshot.
Only the two of them.
Camille looked up.
“Who was the plum dress for?” Damian asked softly.
She smiled.
“Maybe I bought it because I was tired of being invisible.”
“You were never invisible to me.”
“I know that now.”
He stopped moving.
His fingers tightened slightly around hers.
“May I kiss you?”
Camille’s heart seemed to pause.
There it was.
The dangerous man who never repeated an order asking permission like the answer mattered more than anything else.
“Yes.”
Damian kissed her.
Not like a man claiming something.
Like a man finally being allowed to touch what he had spent a year refusing to reach for.
His hand came gently to her face. Camille caught the front of his jacket and kissed him back, all the anger and grief and longing of the last two years folding into one impossible moment.
When they separated, his forehead rested against hers.
“I should have asked you a year ago,” he said.
“You should have told me about my father a year ago.”
“That too.”
She smiled.
Then every phone in the office began ringing at once.
Damian’s expression changed.
Nico burst through the doors carrying a tablet.
“You need to see this.”
A local news station filled the screen.
BREAKING NEWS: FEDERAL AUTHORITIES RAID MORETTI SHIPPING OFFICES.
Below it ran a second line.
ANONYMOUS SOURCE LINKS DAMIAN MORETTI TO 11-YEAR-OLD DEATH OF ACCOUNTANT ARTHUR RHODES.
Camille went cold.
The reporter continued.
“Documents released tonight allege that Moretti ordered the killing after Rhodes discovered financial irregularities connected to the Blackstone Foundation.”
Damian’s face became stone.
Nico said, “Salvatore dumped forged records to three news outlets and Internal Affairs.”
Camille’s phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
She opened it.
A photograph appeared.
Vivian Blackstone sitting alone in the unfinished pediatric wing of St. Catherine’s Hospital.
Beneath it were six words.
SHE HAS THE ORIGINAL LEDGER. COME ALONE.
May you like
Then another message.
IF MORETTI FOLLOWS YOU, SHE DIES.
