Chapter 156
Chapter 156:
“They’re prepping her for surgery now,” she said, her voice raw from hours of silence. “Four hours, they said. Maybe five.”
Alexander nodded, watching her face. His own showed signs of fatigue—shadows beneath his eyes, the slight stubble along his jaw—but he remained alert, steady. A port in the storm.
“When I was seven,” Camille said suddenly, “I broke my arm falling from a tree. My father was away on business. My mother sat with me in the emergency room all night, holding my good hand. I remember feeling so safe, knowing she wouldn’t leave me.”
She looked up from her coffee. “When I told my parents about Rose and Stefan’s betrayal, my mother told me I was lying. She chose Rose. She always chose Rose.”
The memory still stung, but distantly now, like an old wound that ached before rain.
“Victoria chose me,” she whispered. “When no one else did.”
The admission hung in the air between them. Camille had never voiced it before—the depth of what Victoria meant to her. Their relationship had always been defined by other terms: mentor and protégé, benefactor and recipient, teacher and student. Never mother and daughter. Not out loud.
Alexander reached across the table, his hand covering hers. “She chose you for a reason, Camille. She saw something in you worth investing in, worth protecting. Worth loving.”
Loving. The word struck Camille like a physical blow. Victoria Kane was not a woman who spoke of love. She spoke of excellence, potential, and strength. But in her actions—taking in a battered woman with nothing to offer, reshaping her, defending her, and now naming her heir to everything she had built—wasn’t that its own language of love?
“I can’t lose her,” Camille said, the words breaking free after hours of containment. “Not now. Not when I’ve just realized…”
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“Realized what?” Alexander asked gently.
Camille gripped her coffee cup so hard her knuckles whitened. “That she’s my mother now. Not by blood, but by… by everything that matters.”
Her voice cracked. “My entire life, I wanted my parents to be proud of me. To see me. Really see me. They never did.” She drew a shaky breath. “Victoria saw me from the beginning. The real me, beneath the perfect daughter, beneath the devoted wife, beneath the victim. She saw who I could become.”
Alexander’s hand tightened on hers. “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”
The directness of his question broke something inside her. The careful wall she had constructed over the past two days crumbled.
“I’m afraid the surgery won’t work,” she whispered. “I’m afraid I’ll lose her. I’m afraid of walking into that boardroom as the controlling shareholder of Kane Industries and failing. I’m afraid Rose and Herod will win because I wasn’t strong enough.”
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