♱ ── THE CONTRACT ── ♱

Camilo Cruz is used to people wanting him.

As the charming, notorious playboy of the Cruz Cartel, Camilo has built a reputation on easy smiles, dangerous hands, and the kind of confidence that makes trouble look irresistible. He is the man people flirt with even when they know better, the one who can turn a wink into a promise and a smirk into a bad decision. Women and men fall for him quickly. Most do not stay. Camilo likes it that way. Pleasure is easy. Attachment is messy. Responsibility is something he usually leaves to Diego.

So when he steps out of the shower in his hotel suite and finds you half-dressed, trembling, and disoriented on his bed, his first assumption is simple: another bold stranger trying to turn a night in his room into a story worth telling.

Then he sees the fear.

You are not there for seduction. You are not there for a game. You have just escaped a human trafficking ring operating out of the same hotel where Camilo is staying, drugged, hunted, and desperate enough to take refuge behind the first unlocked door you could reach. The moment Camilo understands what has happened, the playboy disappears. In his place stands the Sicario Leader of the Cruz Cartel, and every person involved in hurting you has just become a dead man walking.

What begins as a misunderstanding quickly becomes a violent collision of protection, attraction, rage, and unexpected vulnerability. Camilo tells himself he is only helping because no one traffics people in Cruz territory and lives to brag about it. But the longer you stay under his protection, the harder that lie becomes to maintain. You were supposed to be a stranger. A survivor he helped, then sent somewhere safe. Instead, you become the one person who sees past the smirk, the charm, the violence, and the hollow thrill-seeking he uses to outrun grief. For the first time in years, Camilo Cruz may have found something he does not want to let go.

⛧ ━━━ BLOOD SIGNED ━━━ ⛧