Camille’s brows drew together.
For a moment she simply stared at him, searching his face, trying to figure out if he was joking.
Was he serious?
She waited for the faint trace of amusement that had lingered there through the rest of their conversation.
Nothing.
Not even the smallest hint of it.
His expression stayed calm, steady, and completely unreadable, gray eyes fixed on her without so much as a flicker to give him away.
A chill crept up her spine as the realization settled in.
He wasn’t joking.
Her mind flashed back to the warehouse behind the café — the cold gravel, the smell of blood and gun oil, the two men kneeling in front of him with nowhere left to run.
Three fingers.
Waste them.
He’d worn this exact expression giving both orders, that same flat stillness, as though the words cost him nothing at all to say.
He hadn’t shouted.
He hadn’t hesitated.
He’d simply spoken, and two men had died within seconds of it, their screams still occasionally surfacing in her memory when she least expected them to.
This wasn’t a man who made empty threats.
If he said he’d do something, he would.
Without another word, she reached out and snatched the fork from his hand, her fingers brushing his in the process.
“I — I can feed myself.”
He released it without any resistance at all, as if he’d expected exactly this outcome from the beginning, settling back in his chair with an ease that only made her more irritated.
“Hm.”
She shot him one last glare before lowering herself into the chair, chin lifted in what little defiance she had left in her.
For the first few bites, she forced herself to eat slowly, spine straight, determined not to let him see how hungry she actually was, how many hours it had actually been since she’d last eaten anything at all.
But hunger was a stubborn thing, more stubborn than pride, and it didn’t take long for her resolve to start slipping.
The warmth of the soup spread through her, easing an ache that had been sitting in her stomach since morning, settling something in her chest she hadn’t realized had gone so hollow.
Another spoonful.
A low, satisfied sound slipped out of her before she’d even realized it was coming.
Still riding the pleasure of it, she barely registered the second bite before it happened again — louder this time — her brain catching up only after her own mouth had already betrayed her.
Her hand flew up over her lips, eyes snapping toward Liam, horror dawning in real time across her face.
He hadn’t said a word while she ate, hadn’t rushed her or commented, simply watching in silence, elbow propped against the table, chin resting against his knuckles — right up until the first sound escaped her.
For half a second he assumed she was doing it deliberately, some small act of defiance dressed up as something else, until he took in the rest of her: the unguarded gleam of pleasure in her eyes, the eager, unselfconscious way she’d been eating, entirely lost in the food in front of her, guard down completely for the first time since she’d arrived at the estate.
Then came the second sound, and something flickered across his face — there and gone almost too fast to register, something that might, on anyone else, have been surprise — before his expression settled back into its usual unreadable calm.
Only on the second one did she seem to remember he was in the room at all.
Her eyes went wide, clearly startled by herself as much as by him, spoon frozen halfway back to the bowl.
A slow, low chuckle rolled out of him, edged with something dangerously close to delight, the sound rarer from him than she’d yet had reason to notice.
“Careful, Snowflake.” His eyes stayed on her, unhurried, tracking every inch of her mortification with obvious enjoyment.
“That’s an interesting sound for soup.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks, spreading down her neck.
She dropped her hand and looked away instantly, too mortified to meet his eyes, staring hard at the tablecloth as though it might offer her somewhere to disappear to.
What was wrong with her?
Why did her body have to betray her like that, in front of him of all people?
Liam watched her squirm with obvious enjoyment, entirely aware of exactly how flustered she was, in no hurry at all to let her off the hook.
“Miss Wilson.” A pause, deliberate, drawn out just long enough to make her brace for it.
“Did you just moan over dinner?” His mouth curved into something wicked.
“Your sense of pleasure is somewhat concerning.”
She stole a glance at him, still burning with embarrassment, and found his lips curled into a smirk that made the whole situation infinitely worse, a look far too pleased with itself for her liking.
Before either of them could say anything else—
Buzz.
His phone vibrated against the table, rattling faintly against the polished wood.
He glanced at it once and let it sit, unbothered, attention still mostly on her.
Buzz.
It went again, and this time he picked it up, thumb sliding across the screen without any real urgency yet.
The moment his eyes landed on the screen, everything about him changed, the shift so complete it took her a beat to understand she was watching the same man.
His expression didn’t darken with anger, exactly — it became something far more unsettling than that.
Cold.
Controlled.
Entirely unreadable.
The gray in his eyes became so cold, and whatever intimidating presence she’d first felt behind the café returned all at once, heavier than before, filling the room in a way that made the walls themselves feel closer.
Camille felt it settle over the room immediately — subtle, but overwhelming, as though every trace of warmth had been quietly siphoned out of the air around them, the temperature itself seeming to drop a few degrees though nothing had physically changed at all.
The man sitting across from her no longer looked anything like the one who’d just been teasing her over a bowl of soup.
He looked exactly like the man she’d seen outside Maple Grove — the ruthless boss whose quietest words carried the weight of life and death.
A chill worked its way down her spine, her spoon forgotten now, hovering somewhere above the bowl.
She caught a glimpse of the screen from where she sat — a CCTV feed, something that looked like a garage, grainy figures moving across it in silence — before she could open her mouth to ask what was wrong.
The bedroom door flew open, hard enough to bang against the wall behind it.
Margaret hurried in, her usually composed face betraying real urgency for the first time since Camille had arrived, breath slightly uneven as though she’d hurried the whole way there.
She stopped just inside the doorway and lowered her head.
“Mr.
Macford.”
Liam finally looked up from the phone, gaze already sharpened into something entirely elsewhere.
“There are guests here to see you.”
He rose without a word wasted, chair scraping back against the floor, slipping the phone into his pocket, and looked at Camille one last time, something in the look lingering a half second longer than it needed to.
“I’m aware.” A pause.
“Finish your dinner.” His tone stayed calm, dangerously so, holding her gaze in a way that left no room for argument.
“I mean it.”
Then he turned and left the room, Margaret falling into step a pace behind him, the door swinging shut in their wake.
Camille hadn’t fully processed what had just happened until she heard it — the loud, unmistakable click of the door.
Locked.
She sat there for a long moment afterward, spoon still in hand, the soup slowly cooling in front of her, the echo of that click settling into the quiet the way a held breath settles after finally being let go — and no matter how hard she strained to listen, she couldn’t hear a single sound coming from anywhere else in the house.