Chapter 3
Miles told me his version first.
Camille Arden became Camille Caine eight years ago in a private family ceremony.
She never used his surname publicly.
Her father, Vincent Arden, hated Miles.
Thought a security man was beneath his daughter.
That made secrecy convenient.
Then Vincent died.
Their marriage deteriorated.
Miles left.
Not formally.
Emotionally.
He told me his wife lived elsewhere.
I never asked her name.
My mistake.
Then three years later, Miles joined my security detail.
“Did Camille send you?”
“No.”
I stared.
He held my eyes.
“I came because I needed work.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
He accepted the suspicion.
Good.
Then eighteen months ago Camille appeared at a donor dinner.
I remembered.
Beautiful.
Sharp.
Funny.
She challenged me without performing fear.
I liked her immediately.
Miles saw her across the room.
Said nothing.
“Why?”
His answer took too long.
“Because she told me not to.”
There.
The marriage might have been broken.
The loyalty was not.
“What did she want?”
“At first? Nothing.”
I waited.
He corrected himself.
“She wanted to see whether you recognized the Arden name.”
I had not.
Vincent Arden had been one of my father’s senior associates twenty years earlier.
Expelled after trying to build his own faction inside Bellucci territory.
I knew the history.
Not the daughter.
Camille had been seventeen when it happened.
“Then?”
Miles looked toward the library door.
“She started seeing you.”
“And you stayed silent.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she said she loved you.”
I almost smiled.
“That helped?”
“No.”
Good.
“What did she want from the marriage?”
Miles hesitated.
“Access.”
There.
Not money.
Not jewelry.
Position.
The Arden name had spent two decades outside the rooms that mattered.
Marriage to me restored it instantly.
And Miles?
My security man.
Her husband.
Two routes into the center.
I looked at him.
“You were never simply my bodyguard.”
His jaw tightened.
“At first I was.”
“And later?”
Silence.
Later he became both.
Loyal to me.
May you like
Bound to her.
A man trying to live on both sides of a betrayal until a three-year-old exposed the line between them.
