The room was a dungeon.
There were no floor-to-ceiling windows here, no breathtaking panoramas of the glittering Metro Manila skyline to distract from the work. The walls were painted a light-absorbing Vantablack, shrinking the world down to the illuminated center of the room. There were no mirrors to flatter the ego. There were no televisions to numb the mind. There was only iron.
Massive racks of black steel dominated the space, a brutalist architecture of function over form. They were loaded with plates the size of manhole covers, their edges chipped from years of violent collisions. Dumbbells sat in long, threatening rows like sleeping iron beasts, ascending in size to monstrous proportions that Yanna couldn't imagine lifting with two hands, let alone one. Thick chains hung from the ceiling like rusted vines. Heavy ropes lay coiled in the corners like dead pythons.
The air was stifling. It was a sauna of exertion, a pressurized box where the oxygen felt thin and the humidity clung to Yanna's skin, making her blouse stick to her back instantly. The silence of the penthouse had been replaced by a low, rhythmic hum—the vibration of the ventilation system struggling to cycle the heavy, wet air.
And in the center of the darkness stood the engine.
Camille.
She had her back to the door. She was standing in front of a squat rack, her hands resting on her hips, her head bowed. She was motionless, but the energy radiating off her was kinetic, violent, a stillness that vibrated.
She was drenched.
Yanna had never seen a human being sweat like this. It was not a polite, glowing sheen of perspiration; it was a torrential release, a total saturation of the body. Camille was wearing grey compression shorts and a black racerback tank top, but the fabric had been rendered effectively transparent by moisture. The grey had turned black with sweat; the black was slick and reflective as oil. The tank top clung to her torso like a second skin, a wet membrane that outlined every ridge of her spine, every breath of her ribs, every cord of muscle in her back.
Her hair, usually a curtain of platinum silk that moved with the air, was dark with water, matted and heavy. It had escaped its severe ponytail, plastering itself to the back of her neck in wet, chaotic ropes, dripping onto her shoulders.
She was breathing. Heave. Heave. The sound was wet and loud, the sound of huge lungs desperate for oxygen, the sound of an animal that had run its prey to the ground.
But it was her physical presence—the sheer, undeniable geometry of her—that stole the air from Yanna's lungs.
Camille was swollen.
The workout had pumped blood into her muscles, expanding them, hardening them, pushing them against the confines of her skin. Her shoulders were broad shelves of power, the deltoids capped and round like cannonballs, dwarfing her waist. Her arms, usually sleek and elegant in her business suits, were revealed now for what they were: weapons. They were roped with vascularity. Thick, blue-green veins traced a map of effort down her triceps and across her forearms, pulsing with the rhythm of her racing heart.
The tattoos on her left arm—the intricate dragons, the thorns, the falling feathers—seemed to be writhing. The sweat made the ink glisten, refracting the harsh overhead light, giving the illusion that the art was alive, swimming just beneath the surface of her skin. The dragon on her shoulder blade seemed to breathe with every heave of her chest, its scales expanding and contracting.
Camille didn't turn. She knew Yanna was there. The silence of the room had been broken by the opening door, by Yanna's terrified breathing, but she didn't acknowledge it. She simply stood there, staring at the iron bar in front of her, her chest rising and falling.
She reached up with both hands. The movement caused the muscles of her back to shift and slide like tectonic plates, a mesmerizing display of anatomical leverage. She pulled the elastic band from her hair.
The platinum mass tumbled down her back, wet and heavy, slapping against her skin. She shook her head, sending a spray of sweat droplets flying into the dim light like diamonds.
"Come here."
The command was a low rumble, barely audible over the sound of her own breathing. It was not shouted. It didn't need to be. In this room, her voice was the law of gravity.
Yanna moved. She felt like a moth drawn to a forest fire, pulled forward against her will. Her knees screamed with every step, the pain a sharp, biting counterpoint to the dull thud of her heart. The heat rolling off Camille was a physical wall. It smelled of salt and iron and expensive soap burning off skin. It was intoxicating. It was the smell of will made physical.
Yanna stopped three feet behind her. She felt small. She felt fragile. Standing next to this monolith of biological power, Yanna felt like a creature made of glass, liable to shatter if the pressure in the room increased by even a single bar.
Camille didn't turn. She reached out and patted the black leather of a weight bench beside her.
"Stand here."
Yanna obeyed. She stepped up to the bench. She was close enough now to see the texture of Camille's skin—the pores open, the flush of red heat rising from her neck, the way the water tracked through the valley of her spine.
"My shoulders," Camille said. Her voice was tight, clipped, the words bitten off. "They are tight."
She rolled her neck. A sickening crack echoed in the quiet room, the sound of bone shifting against bone.
"Fix them."
Yanna stared at the expanse of wet, flushed skin in front of her.
The command was simple. The reality was terrifying. Touch her? Put her hands on this burning, heaving creature? It felt like being asked to touch a live wire. It felt like a transgression. This body was a temple of violence, a private altar that Yanna had no right to approach.
But the memory of the beans was fresh. The ache in Yanna's knees was a sharp, biting reminder of the cost of hesitation. The contract was clear.
Clause 12. Absolute Obedience.
Yanna raised her hands. They were trembling violently. She held them inches from Camille's skin, feeling the radiant heat. It was like hovering her palms over a stovetop burner.
She took a breath that tasted of copper. She closed her eyes.
She made contact.
The shock was visceral.
Yanna expected softness. She expected the yielding texture of a woman's flesh, the damp give of skin. What she found was stone.
Beneath the slick, hot film of sweat, Camille's muscles were rock hard. There was no give. It was like touching a statue that had been left out in the desert sun for a century. The skin was slippery, the friction of the sweat making Yanna's fingers glide, but the structure underneath was immovable.
Camille didn't flinch. She let out a long, shuddering exhale, her head dropping forward, offering her neck to Yanna's mercy.
Yanna began to work.
She slipped into the clinical dissociation of a medic. It was the only way to survive the intimacy. She stopped seeing "Camille Navarro, the Billionaire." She stopped seeing the monster who owned her life. She saw anatomy. She saw leverage. She saw tension vectors.
Trapezius.
Yanna dug her thumbs into the thick cords of muscle that ran from the neck to the shoulder. They were tight, bunched into iron knots that felt less like biology and more like industrial cabling. She pressed. She used her body weight, leaning into the bench, driving her thumbs into the meat of the muscle, searching for the release.
"Harder," Camille growled. The vibration traveled through her skin and into Yanna's fingertips.
Yanna gritted her teeth. She pushed. She felt the fibers of the muscle roll and snap under her thumbs. It was brutal work. Her own hands began to ache immediately, cramping from the effort of manipulating such dense tissue. It was like trying to knead cold clay.
Camille made a sound. It started deep in her chest, a low, vibrating hum. It wasn't a moan. It was a growl of pain and release. It was the sound of a predator being groomed, a lioness allowing a smaller creature to pick the thorns from her paw.
Yanna moved outward. Deltoids.
Her fingers traced the cap of the shoulder. The muscle was beautifully formed, separated into distinct heads—anterior, lateral, posterior. It felt like polished granite. Yanna kneaded the flesh, her hands slick with Camille's sweat. The smell was overwhelming now. It filled Yanna's nose, coating the back of her throat. It was the smell of pure effort. It was the smell of a body that had pushed itself to the edge of failure and survived.
She worked the lateral head, her fingers sliding over the damp skin. The definition was incredible; she could feel the striations of the muscle fibers, the grooves where the sinew attached to the bone. It was a landscape of power.
Yanna moved down. Rhomboids. Latissimus Dorsi.
She pushed her thumbs into the space between the shoulder blades. The muscles here were broad and flat, shifting like tectonic plates over the ribcage. The sweat was heavier here, pooling in the small of Camille's back. Yanna's hands were soaked in it.
And then, her fingers found something else.
A disruption in the pattern. A change in the topography.
On the right side of Camille's back, hidden beneath the curve of the shoulder blade, the skin was raised. Ridged.
Yanna slowed. She traced the line with her thumb. It was a thin, silvery scar. Old. Healed. And beside it, another. And another. A latticework of fine, pale lines crisscrossing the muscle, a secret alphabet written in scar tissue.
Yanna's blood ran cold.
These weren't stretch marks. These weren't surgical scars. They were precise. They were deliberate. They were the marks of something sharp, applied with intent.
The realization hit Yanna with the force of a blow. You bleed, too.
This woman—this titan of industry, this physical goddess, this monster who forced girls to kneel on beans—was a map of violence. Someone had hurt her. Someone had cut her. Or... a darker thought bloomed in the humidity of the room... had she done this to herself?
Were these the external marks of the same internal pressure that drove Yanna to sharpen her fingernails? Were they the receipts of a pain too great to be contained by the mind?
The discovery humanized the monster. It made her smaller. It made her infinitely more dangerous. It meant that Camille Navarro wasn't a machine; she was a survivor. And survivors were capable of anything.
Yanna was so lost in the geography of the scars, so mesmerized by the vulnerability hidden on this back of steel, that her pressure faltered. Her thumb slipped from the muscle.
"Don't stop."
The command was a whip crack. Camille hadn't moved, but her awareness was absolute.
Yanna gasped, terrified, and dug her fingers back in. She worked frantically, kneading the tension, trying to apologize with her hands. She moved up the neck, her fingers slipping into the wet, matted hair at the base of Camille's skull.
Camille let out a long, ragged sigh. Her head rolled back slightly, resting against Yanna's stomach. The intimacy of it was shocking. For a moment, they weren't master and servant. They were just two bodies in a hot room, connected by touch and sweat and the shared language of pain.
Yanna looked down.
Camille's right hand was resting on her thigh.
It was a ruin.
The knuckles of the index and middle fingers were not merely grazed; they were obliterated. The skin had been flayed back, peeling away like the rind of a fruit to reveal the raw, wet meat beneath. It was a chaotic geography of trauma. The abrasions were deep, weeping a mixture of clear serous fluid and dark, oxygen-rich blood that pooled in the valleys between her tendons. The area surrounding the impact points was already reacting, the flesh swelling angrily, turning a mottled, sickly palette of violet, indigo, and black.
Dark rivulets of blood mixed with the sweat on her hand, creating a thin, pink glaze that dripped slowly from her fingertips, spotting the pristine rubber floor beneath the bench. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Yanna stared at the wound, her mind reeling. This was not an injury sustained from lifting a barbell. This was not the friction burn of a rope. This was impact trauma. Blunt force.
Her gaze lifted, involuntary, to the heavy bag suspended from the steel beam in front of them. It was a massive cylinder of dense leather, meant to absorb punishment. But there, at standing shoulder height, the leather was stained darker than the rest. It was scuffed, worn down, and smeared with a faint, rusty residue.
She wasn't wearing gloves.
The realization hit Yanna with the force of a physical blow, knocking the wind out of her. Camille hadn't been training. She hadn't been exercising to maintain the sculpture of her physique. She had been raging. She had stood before that bag and thrown her bare fists into the hardened leather with the force of a pile driver, over and over again, until her own body broke before the object did.
The breathlessness. The torrential sweat. The raw, shredded voice on the intercom. It all clicked into a terrifying picture. Yanna wasn't standing behind an athlete cooling down; she was standing behind a berserker who had just finished destroying herself.
The violence of the act was staggering. Yanna looked back at the hand. The pain must be excruciating—the exposed nerve endings, the crushed capillaries. Yet Camille sat there, her chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm, utterly ignoring the blood dripping from her own body. She treated the damage to her own flesh with the same cold indifference she showed to Yanna's knees. Pain was not a signal to stop. Pain was just a byproduct of existence.
Yanna's hands froze on Camille's neck. The rhythm of the massage broke.
The sudden cessation of movement was louder than a shout in the quiet room. The silence rushed back in, heavy and suffocating, charged with the static electricity of the disruption.
"Ma'am," Yanna whispered. The word was barely a breath, fragile as glass.
Camille stiffened. The muscles under Yanna's lingering fingertips—the trapezius, the splenius capitis—snapped tight, turning from pliable clay back into granite. The spell of the massage was shattered.
"I didn't tell you to stop," Camille said. Her voice was a low, dangerous rumble, vibrating through her back and into Yanna's palms. It was the warning growl of a sleeping predator poked with a stick.
"Your hand," Yanna said, the words tumbling out before her fear could choke them back. The instinct of the medic, of the caretaker, overrode the instinct of the servant. She took a step back, her hands leaving Camille's skin. The loss of contact felt like a sudden drop in temperature. "You're bleeding. Badly."
Camille froze.
For a long, agonizing second, she didn't move. She sat perfectly still, a statue of sweat and tension. Then, slowly, with the grinding inevitability of a tank turret rotating, she turned her head.
She looked over her shoulder. Her face was flushed deep crimson, her hair plastered to her forehead in wet chaos. Her eyes, usually cold amber, were blown wide, the pupils dilated, swallowing the iris. They were the eyes of an animal caught in a trap, or an animal about to spring. There was a wildness there, a raw, unmoored fury that terrified Yanna more than the cold calculation ever had.
Camille looked at Yanna. She looked at the girl standing there, trembling, pointing at the injury.
Then, she looked down.
She raised her right hand slowly, turning it over to inspect the damage. She flexed her fingers. The movement stretched the split skin of the knuckles, tearing the coagulating blood. A fresh wave of crimson welled up, bright and hot.
Camille stared at it. She tilted her head, observing the flow of blood with a detached, clinical curiosity, as if she were watching a leak in a pipe, not her own body breaking down.
She let out a short, sharp breath through her nose.
The wildness in her eyes began to recede. The pupils contracted. The feral heat cooled, replaced by the familiar, terrifying sheet of ice. The calculation returned. She processed the pain, categorized it, and filed it away as irrelevant.
"So I am," Camille murmured.
She didn't ask for a bandage. She didn't ask for the kit. She lowered her hand, letting it rest back on her thigh, the blood smearing against the grey fabric of her shorts.
She turned her body slightly on the bench, angling herself so that her profile was to Yanna, opening the line of her shoulder and arm.
"It will clot," Camille said, her voice flat. "The body repairs itself. That is its function. Unlike you, it requires no instruction to do its job."
She fixed Yanna with a gaze that pinned her to the rubber floor.
"You stopped," Camille noted. It wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "You broke the rhythm."
"I... I thought you might want..." Yanna stammered, gesturing helplessly at the wound.
"I want," Camille cut her off, her voice dropping to a silken, deadly whisper, "for you to finish what you were told to do. My shoulders are still tight. And now..." She rotated her left arm, the one covered in ink, flexing it slightly. "My arms. They ache."
She pointed to the floor beside the bench, directly between her spread knees and the rack of dumbbells.
"Here. Stand here."
Yanna hesitated. The spot Camille indicated was intimate. It would place her directly in Camille's personal space, looming over her seated form, trapped between the bench and the wall of weights.
"Now," Camille snapped.
Yanna moved. She stepped into the space. She was so close she could feel the heat radiating from Camille's torso, smell the sharp, metallic tang of the blood mixing with the musk of sweat.
"The biceps," Camille commanded. "And the brachialis. They took the brunt of the impact."
She extended her left arm, the tattooed one, offering it to Yanna. The limb was heavy with muscle, the skin slick. The dragon tattoo wound around the bicep, its claws digging into the definition of the muscle belly.
Yanna reached out. Her hands were shaking. She placed one hand under Camille's elbow to support the arm, and the other on the thickest part of the upper arm.
The sensation was overwhelming.
The bicep was a solid mass of power. Even relaxed, it was hard, swollen with the pump from the workout. Yanna's fingers slipped on the sweat, sliding over the ink. She felt the heat of the blood rushing through the limb.
"Work it," Camille breathed.
Yanna began to knead. She dug her thumbs into the inner bicep, finding the groove between the muscles. The tissue here was sensitive, dense. As she pressed, she felt the thick, roped vein—the cephalic vein—pulsing under the skin like a buried wire.
It was an act of profound, confusing intimacy. Yanna was holding the very limb that represented the power that enslaved her. This arm could strangle her. This arm could destroy the heavy bag. Yet here it was, heavy and limp in her hands, waiting to be serviced.
Yanna worked her way up the arm, her fingers tracing the line of the bone. She pressed into the insertion point near the shoulder, digging deep.
Camille let out a hiss. Her head fell back, exposing the long, white column of her throat. Her eyes fluttered shut.
"Harder," she whispered. "Crush it."
Yanna obeyed. She squeezed. She used the heels of her hands, grinding into the muscle. She felt the fibers separate. She felt the tension in the arm fight back, then yield. It was like sculpting hot clay.
She moved to the other arm. The right arm. The one with the ruined hand.
Yanna hesitated again.
"Do not stop," Camille murmured, her eyes still closed, her head lolling back. "Ignore the hand. Focus on the muscle."
Yanna took the right arm. She was careful, so careful, not to jar the bleeding knuckles. She held the wrist gently, avoiding the wound, and focused her attention on the bicep.
This arm was even tighter. The muscles were spasms of iron. Yanna worked with a desperate intensity, sweating now herself in the humid room. She kneaded the tricep, the back of the arm, feeling the horseshoe shape of the muscle under the wet skin. She worked the front, her thumbs sliding over the slick, flushed flesh.
The smell of the room—the iron, the sweat, the blood—was dizzying. It was a sensory overload that blurred the lines of reality. Yanna felt like she was drowning in Camille's physicality. Every touch was a transfer of energy. She was absorbing Camille's pain, Camille's rage, Camille's heat.
She worked the bicep for what felt like hours. Her own hands were cramping, her fingers burning with fatigue. But the sound of Camille's breathing—deep, rhythmic, heavy—was a drug. It was the sound of the beast being soothed.
Yanna pressed her thumbs into the deep tissue near the armpit, a vulnerable, tender spot.
Camille gasped. Her eyes snapped open.
She looked at Yanna. Her face was inches away. The flush was high on her cheekbones. Her lips were parted.
For a moment, there was no master, no slave. There was only the visceral reality of two bodies, wet and breathing in the dark.
"Good," Camille whispered. The word was a caress.
She pulled her arm from Yanna's grasp. She sat up straight, the sudden movement breaking the hypnotic rhythm. She looked at her bleeding hand again. The blood had begun to clot, dark and sticky, but the swelling was worse.
She looked at Yanna, her eyes clearing, the amber sharpening into focus. The vulnerability vanished, locked away behind the fortress of her will.
"You have useful hands," Camille said. It was a clinical assessment, devoid of warmth, but to Yanna, it sounded like salvation.
Camille stood up. She towered over Yanna, casting a long shadow in the dim light. She held out the ruined hand, palm up, the fingers curled slightly.
"Now," Camille said, her voice regaining its absolute, crushing authority. "Fetch the kit."