SCORNED EX WIFE Queen Of Ashes (Camille and Stefan)

The basement air hung heavy and cold around Camille as she fought to keep her breathing steady. Her wrists burned against the rope that bound her to the metal chair. Four hours had passed since Rose had taken her from their former location to this place, four hours of her sister's twisted games.

Rose circled her now, bare feet silent on the concrete floor. The room was lit only by the harsh blue glow of laptop screens showing footage of the Grand Plaza Hotel bombing on endless loop.

"Watch it again," Rose whispered, her face inches from Camille's ear. "Watch what I did to your precious foundation. To your guests. To everything you built."

On the largest screen, flames erupted through the hotel's glass facade. People screamed, stumbling through smoke. Emergency lights flashed across terrified faces. Camille closed her eyes.

"No!" Rose grabbed Camille's jaw, forcing her head toward the screen. "You don't get to look away. Not until you understand what it feels like to lose everything."

Camille met her sister's gaze. "I already know what that feels like. You taught me that lesson two years ago."

Rose laughed, the sound sharp and wrong. She looked different now, thinner, with dark circles under her eyes. Her once-perfect appearance had crumbled like everything else in her life.

"You think you know loss?" Rose turned up the volume. The screams grew louder. "Alexander was barely scratched last time. Victoria survived. Even your pathetic parents walked away." Her fingers dug into Camille's shoulders. "That was just practice."

"What do you want from me, Rose?" Camille's voice remained steady despite the fear churning in her stomach. "To cry? To beg? Would that finally make you happy?"

Rose moved to a smaller laptop and tapped a key. The screen showed Alexander pacing in what looked like a command center, his face drawn with worry as he spoke urgently to agents.

"He's looking for you. So desperate." Rose smiled, running her finger across the screen as if touching his face. "I've left enough bread crumbs to keep them searching in all the wrong places."

"Leave him out of this," Camille said, fighting to keep her voice level. "This is between us."

"Between us?" Rose's voice rose. "No. You brought them all into it when you turned them against me. When you stole back everything that should have been mine."

She crouched in front of Camille, her eyes bright with an emotion that went

beyond hatred. "Do you know what comes next? After you've had enough time to imagine all the horrible ways I could hurt him?"

Camille didn't answer.

"I'm going to let you watch me kill him. Not quickly, that would be too kind." Rose's words came faster now, her breathing uneven. "I'll make it last. And I'll make sure he knows you're watching. That you can't save him."

The calm Camille had maintained began to crack. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Alexander. The thought of him suffering at Rose's hands tore through her defenses.

"You're going to fail," Camille said, her voice low. "Just like you failed at the hotel. Just like you've failed at everything else."

Rose's hand struck Camille's face, hard enough to snap her head to the side. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.

"I didn't fail!" Rose screamed, losing the calculated control she'd maintained. "They lived because they were lucky! Not this time. Not with what I have planned."

She grabbed another laptop, turning it toward Camille. On the screen, Victoria sat in her lake house, looking frail but determined as she spoke with someone off-

camera.

"Look her. So weak already. Cancer eating from the side." Rose's words dripped with venom. "She doesn't need much help dying, does she? Just a little push."

Camille pulled against her restraints, feeling the rope cut deeper into her wrists. The pain helped her focus, helped her push down the terror threatening to overwhelm her.

"Victoria is stronger than you'll ever be," Camille said. "Even dying, she's more alive than you are right now."

Rose stared at her, momentarily speechless. Then she laughed, high and brittle. "Look at you. Still fighting. Still thinking there's a way out of this." She walked around the room, touching each screen. "Alexander will die knowing he failed to save you. Victoria will die believing you're already gone. Your parents?" She shrugged. "Collateral damage. They chose you, so they get your fate."

"And then what?" Camille asked. "When everyone is gone, what do you have? Who will be left to care that you won?"

Rose froze, her back to Camille. For a long moment, she stood absolutely still. When she turned, something had shifted in her expression.

"I'll have everything I deserved from the beginning. Everything you stole from me." But her voice wavered slightly.

"You'll have nothing," Camille said softly. "No one to witness your victory. No one to fear you. No one to love you."

"Shut up!" Rose grabbed a glass of water from the table and threw it at the wall, where it shattered. "You don't understand anything! You never did!"

"I understand that you're alone, Rose. That you've always been alone, even when you were surrounded by people. Even when you had Stefan. Even now, with all your plans."

"I'm not alone! I have..." Rose stopped, as if realizing something for the first time.

"You have what? Hired men? People you pay to help you? People you'll dispose of when they're no longer useful?" Camille leaned forward as far as her restraints would allow. "That's not family. That's not love."

Rose's face twisted. "Love? What did love ever get you? A husband who cheated? Parents who doubted you? Love is weakness. I learned that in foster care, long before your parents took me in."

She moved suddenly to Camille's side, pulling a knife from her pocket. The blade gleamed in the blue light of the screens.

"You think you're so strong," Rose whispered, tracing the flat of the blade along Camille's cheek. "Let's see how strong you are when Alexander is bleeding out in front of you. When Victoria takes her last breath while you watch, helpless."

Camille stared straight ahead, refusing to show fear even as the cold metal pressed against her skin. "Killing them won't make you stronger, Rose. It won't heal whatever's broken inside you."

Rose pressed the knife harder, just enough to break the skin. A thin line of blood ran down Camille's cheek.

"Nothing's broken in me," Rose hissed. "I see the world exactly as it is. I take what I want. I don't wait for it to be given."

"Then why do you care so much what I think?" Camille asked. "Why make me watch? Why not just kill them and be done with it?"

Rose stepped back, blinking rapidly. The knife trembled slightly in her hand.

"Because... because you need to understand. You need to feel what I felt." "When? When did I ever make you feel like this?"

"Every day!" Rose's voice cracked. "Every single day when they looked at you with love in their eyes. When Stefan chose you instead of staying with me. When everyone believed you were some perfect, precious daughter while I had to fight for every scrap of attention!"

Tears streamed down Rose's face now, her careful mask completely shattered.

The knife hung loosely in her hand.

"I wanted them to see me," she whispered. "Just once, I wanted to be the one they chose first."

For the first time since her capture, Camille felt something beyond fear and anger, a flicker of pity for the broken woman before her. The girl who had never been enough, who had learned to take because she believed nothing would ever be freely given.

Rose wiped her face roughly, angry at her own weakness. "Stop looking at me like that. Like you feel sorry for me."

"I don't feel sorry for you," Camille said quietly. "I understand you. That's different."

"You understand nothing!" Rose shouted, but her voice lacked conviction.

"I understand what it's like to lose everything and have to build yourself again from nothing," Camille continued. "I understand what it's like when the people who should love you most betray you instead."

Rose gripped the knife tighter, her knuckles turning white. "Stop it."

"The difference is what we built from our pain," Camille pressed on. "I chose to

create. You chose to destroy."

Rose paced the room like a caged animal, her breath comin "You still don't get it. You never will."

in uneven gasps.

She turned suddenly, slamming her hands on the table beside Camille,

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her face inches away. "I'm going to hurt him first. Your precious Alexander. And I'm going to make you watch. Then maybe yout understand what it feels like to lose the one person who sees you. The one person who chose you first."

Camille met her gaze steadily. "And that will make you feel better? Watching me

suffer will fill whatever emptiness drives you?"

"Yes!" Rose shouted, then quieter, "Yes. It has to."

"It won't," Camille said simply. "Nothing will. Not as long as you keep believing that taking from others will somehow make you whole."

Rose stared at her, something lost and desperate flickering in her eyes. For a moment, Camille glimpsed the small, frightened girl who had come to their home from foster care, the girl who had learned to hide her fear behind perfect smiles and careful lies.

Then Rose's expression hardened. She straightened up, wiping all emotion from her face with practiced skill.

"Time's up for today's therapy session," she said coldly. "I have preparations to make. Tomorrow, we begin with Alexander."

She gathered her laptop, tucking it under her arm. At the door, she paused,

looking back at Camille with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Sleep well, sister. Tomorrow will be a day you'll never forget."

The door slammed shut behind her. The lock clicked into place with a sound of

finality.

Alone in the half-darkness, Camille tested her restraints again, feeling the rope bite into her skin. Her mind raced through possibilities, through plans and contingencies. She thought of Alexander searching for her, of Victoria fighting her cancer

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and this new threat simultaneously.

Rose wanted her to break, to collapse under the weight of fear and helplessness.

That was the one thing Camille would not give her.

As the screens continued to replay the burning building, the chaos, the destruction, Camille closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Victoria had taught her

that strength came not from never feeling fear, but from continuing to fight despite

it.

When Rose returned tomorrow, she would not find a broken woman waiting to be tortured. She would find Camille Kane, the phoenix who had already risen once from the ashes of a life destroyed.noveldrama

And phoenixes were not afraid of fire.