The office building is quiet at 2 AM.
Scarlett uses the security key card Cameron gave her months ago for "emergencies." The guard downstairs knows not to question her. She's been here so many times that breaking in doesn't feel like breaking in. It feels like coming home to a place that doesn't want her.
His office is the same as always. Cold. Perfect. Controlled.
She doesn't know what she's looking for until she finds it.
The filing cabinet in his private bathroom. Hidden. The kind of place someone keeps things they don't want found. She finds herself pulling open the drawer before she consciously decides to.
Bank statements. Her name appears in red pen, circled repeatedly across months of transactions.
Transfer to Alexander Reed. £50,000.
The word beside it makes her stomach drop: "Silence."
She pulls out more papers. A job contract with Ashford subsidiary. Her signature on it. But when she looks at the details, the position doesn't exist. The company doesn't exist. It's a shell. A cover. A way to give her money without her knowing where it came from.
Her hands start shaking.
More files. Documentation from private investigators. Reports on her father's company. Legal strategies to remove his guardianship. Thousands of pounds spent on her behalf. All without her knowledge. All hidden.
Cameron paid Alexander to disappear.
Cameron created a fake job to keep her alive.
Cameron has been funding her survival while claiming not to care.
Scarlett sits on his bathroom floor surrounded by evidence of his obsession with her. Not romantic obsession. Protective obsession. The kind of love that manifests as control. As secrecy. As making decisions for her because he doesn't trust her to survive the truth.
She's still sitting there when Cameron arrives at 6 AM.
He stops in the bathroom doorway. His face goes completely white.
"Scarlett," he says. Just her name. Nothing else.
She looks up at him. She holds the bank statements in her hand like they're evidence at a trial. Which they are. A trial of love and lies.
"You paid him," she says flatly. "You paid Alexander £50,000 to disappear."
Cameron doesn't deny it. He walks into the bathroom and sits down beside her on the floor like his legs won't hold him anymore.
"Yes," he says.
"The job isn't real," she continues.
"No," he confirms.
"You've been funding me this entire time. Keeping me alive without my consent. Making decisions about my survival without asking me what I wanted."
Cameron closes his eyes. "Yes."
"Why," Scarlett demands.
He's quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.
"Because I've been in love with you since you walked into my office," he says. "Desperate, broken, refusing to beg. Everyone had abandoned you and you still had this strength in you. This dignity. You were the strongest person I'd ever met, and I couldn't let you suffer. I couldn't let you disappear. I couldn't let anyone hurt you."
Scarlett's breath catches.
"I knew the moment I saw you that this fake engagement was a lie," he continues. "I knew because I was lying to myself. I wasn't hiring an actress. I was hiring the woman I'd already started to love."
He opens his eyes and looks at her directly.
"So I protected you. I paid Alexander to stop pursuing you. I created the job so you'd have income and independence. I tracked the people trying to hurt you and I removed them from your path. I did everything I could to keep you safe while maintaining distance because the closer you got to me, the more danger you were in."
"Victoria," Scarlett says.
"Victoria is armor," Cameron says. "She's proof that I can't be hurt. That I'm immune to love. When I'm with her, I'm cold. Controlled. Protected. But when I'm with you, I'm exposed. And exposure is dangerous."
"Why," Scarlett whispers. "Why is loving me dangerous?"
Cameron stands. He walks to the window and looks out at London waking up.
"My father built his empire on manipulation. On using people's love against them. He made my mother dependent on him. He used her love like a weapon. When she tried to leave, he destroyed her. Not physically. Worse than that. He made her believe she couldn't survive without him."
His shoulders are rigid.
"My mother died broken. She spent the last years of her life thinking she was nothing without him. And I watched it happen and I told myself I would never do that to someone. I would never let love become a trap. I would never use it as a weapon."
He turns back to face her.
"But then you came along and I realized I was already doing it. I was using protection as control. I was making your decisions because I was afraid you'd make the wrong ones. I was keeping you small so I could keep you safe. And that's exactly what he did to her."
"So you pushed me away," Scarlett says.
"I tried to," Cameron says. "But you wouldn't let me. You kept coming back. You kept seeing through my coldness. You kept refusing to accept invisibility. And every time you fought back, I fell deeper. And I got more afraid."
Scarlett stands. She holds the bank statements between them like a barrier.
"Then why hide this," she says. "Why make me feel invisible? Why not just tell me you were protecting me? Why let me believe you didn't care?"
Cameron's face crumples.
"Because," he says, and his voice breaks, "if you knew how much I cared, you'd feel obligated to stay. You'd convince yourself you could handle the danger. You'd try to be strong for me. And I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let you sacrifice yourself for me the way my mother sacrificed herself for him."
He takes a step toward her.
"I was protecting you from the choice. I was making sure you'd eventually leave because it was the right choice, not because you felt trapped."
Scarlett stares at him. She understands his logic. She understands his fear. She understands that everything he's done comes from a place of love so intense it's warped into something that looks like cruelty.
"Cameron," she says quietly. "If you love me this much, why would you push me away?"
He doesn't answer.
Because there is no answer. The logic is circular. He loves her so he hurts her. He hurts her so he can protect her. He protects her so she'll leave. But she keeps coming back.
And every time she comes back, his fear grows.
Because what terrifies Cameron most isn't that his love will destroy her. It's that his fear will.
His fear will keep them apart. His fear will make him push her away until she finally stops coming back. His fear will be the weapon that destroys not her, but them. Together.
And Scarlett realizes something that makes her blood run cold.
She's not the one who needs protection from his love.
He is.
He's the one who's fragile. He's the one who's been destroyed. And his fear of that destruction is so massive that he's willing to destroy the only thing that could save him.
Which is her.