Chapter: FIVEChapter 118FIVEPOV: HazelKaden said it and the kitchen went quiet.Not dramatically. Just the specific pause that happened when something arrived that required everyone in the room to set down what they were doing and look at it.My father put his coffee cup down.My mother stopped at the counter.Iris looked around at the change in the room and decided it did not concern her and went back to whatever she had in her hand.I looked at Nikolai.He looked at Kaden."A fifth copy," Nikolai said."The solicitor's records," Kaden said. "The investigators went through everything this morning. They found a payment. Dated nineteen eighty three. From Margaret to a courier service." He paused. "The courier service no longer exists but the investigators traced the records through the company's dissolution filing. The delivery address is in the city.""What address," I said.He told me.I looked at Nikolai.He looked at me."That is the university," I said."Yes," Kaden said. "The records depar
Last Updated: 2026-06-29
Chapter: GENEVAChapter 117GENEVAPOV: HazelHer name was Dr Claire Osei.She was fifty three and she had flown overnight from Geneva with two clinic directors and a folder of twenty years of research and she was sitting in the estate library at eleven in the morning with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting to be in exactly this room and was not going to waste the time now that she was in it.She looked at the folder of Margaret's documentation on the table.She had not touched it yet.She was looking at it the way you looked at something you had been approaching from a long way away."Rajan Anand told me about a compound," she said. "In a conference in nineteen ninety four. He was already ill by then and he knew it and he was trying to get the information out before he could not." She looked at her hands. "He said he had found something on a mountain with a colleague who was no longer alive. He said the colleague had found the secondary application first and had documented it but th
Last Updated: 2026-06-28
Chapter: EGGSEGGSPOV: NikolaiMy father had opinions about eggs.This was the first thing I learned about him in a domestic context and it was both completely surprising and immediately recognisable in the way things were when you had been away from someone long enough that their specific qualities became new information even though they had always been there.He believed eggs should be cooked slowly.Lena believed they should be cooked at the right heat which was not low.They were standing on opposite sides of this question at the kitchen counter when Hazel and I came in and the specific quality of the disagreement was one I recognised from the workshop, the unhurried certainty of a man who was used to doing things at his own pace, except that Lena was also unhurried and also certain and neither of them was going to be moved.I stood in the doorway.Hazel stood beside me."He has been like this since six thirty," she said quietly."What time did he arrive," I said."Six fifteen," she said."He
Last Updated: 2026-06-27
Chapter: RIDGEChapter 115RIDGEPOV: HazelWe went the next morning.Just us, the way Nikolai had said. No investigators, no family, no calls unless something was urgent enough to justify breaking the agreement we had made at the dinner table without saying it out loud.The city was doing its Saturday morning thing when we drove through it, slower than weekdays, the streets having a different quality of purpose, and the ridge road took us up and out of the density of it into the part of the city that was not quite city anymore.The house was at the end of the street the same way it had been yesterday.But yesterday we had gone there as buyers and today we went as the people it belonged to and that was a different kind of arriving.Nikolai had the key.Vera had given it to him last night before we left, produced it from her cardigan pocket as if she had been carrying it for some time, which she probably had, and handed it to him without ceremony and gone back to her chair.He unlocked the front door
Last Updated: 2026-06-26
Chapter: DINNERChapter 114DINNERPOV: HazelThe estate was lit from every window when we pulled through the gate.I noticed that first. The specific quality of a house that had people in it who were actually present rather than occupying separate rooms at a careful distance. Every window. Even the ones that were usually dark.We went inside.The noise hit immediately.Not loud exactly. But the layered sound of multiple conversations happening in proximity, which was something I had not heard in this house in all the months I had been in it. It had always been a house of careful silences and managed distances and now it sounded like something else entirely.I followed it to the dining room.My mother had expanded dinner to the large table.The one that had been set for two when Kaden had tried to have a careful conversation with me about things he was not ready to say directly. The one that seated twelve and had been used for formal family occasions and had never felt like a room where people actual
Last Updated: 2026-06-25
Chapter: FOURTHFOURTHPOV: HazelShe had a letter.Not documentation. Not field notes. Not financial records.A letter.Written by Margaret to the Varyn family, addressed not to any specific person but to the family as a whole, given to a woman named Elsa who had been Margaret's neighbour in the city before the mountain, who was now eighty seven years old and had kept it in a box in her flat for sixty years because Margaret had said keep this until someone comes looking and Elsa had kept it because she was the kind of person who did what she said she would do.Nikolai asked her to stay where she was.He asked for her address and she gave it and he said we are two hours out and she said she would be awake, she did not sleep much anymore, age had that effect.We drove.The city came back toward us out of the dark and Nikolai drove and I sat beside him and thought about what a letter to the family meant. Not to him specifically. Not to Kaden or Vera or Arthur. To the family. The whole structure of it.
Last Updated: 2026-06-24
Addicted to Roseanne {GL}
Blurb
Elle has always been the tough girl next to her best friend Roseanne, the sweet one with perfect curves that make heads turn. In their last year of high school, Elle helps Roseanne take nude photos for her boyfriend Jake, but seeing Roseanne's bare tits sparks a fire in Elle that she can't put out.
Her flag turns rainbow, and her mind fills with filthy dreams of pinning Roseanne down, tasting her wet folds, and making her scream in pleasure. But Jake stands in the way, a rich jerk who cheats and hurts Roseanne.
Elle blackmails him to break up, but that just starts a chain of dark events. Roseanne, heartbroken, leans on Elle for comfort, leading to stolen kisses and heated touches that cross lines. Elle's obsession grows, turning her into a hunter who watches Roseanne sleep, steals her panties, and plans ways to own her fully.
Read
Chapter: playedChapter Twenty-Eight — PlayedElle's POVThe kitchen went completely still.Paul looked at me. My mother looked at me. Roseanne looked at me with an expression that was somewhere between surprise and something that might have been relief."You recorded it," Paul said."When I went to his house Sunday morning I had my phone in my jacket pocket. I hit record before I knocked." I pulled my phone out and set it on the table. "I did the same thing before I called him the night the link went up. I had no way of knowing then that he was doing the same thing. I just knew I needed something real if it ever came to this."Paul looked at the phone. Then at me. "You've had this since Sunday.""Yes.""And you didn't use it.""I didn't need to. Until now."He was quiet for a moment. His hands were still folded on the table. My mother had turned the radio off at some point without me noticing and the kitchen was very quiet."Play it," he said.I opened the file. The recording was forty-three minutes
Last Updated: 2026-05-23
Chapter: BeccaChapter Twenty-Seven — BeccaRoseanne's POVI took my phone from my mother and looked at the screen.Four messages from Becca. The first three were texts, sent two minutes apart. The fourth was a voice note.The texts said: Call me. Seriously call me. Rose please pick up.I played the voice note with the phone pressed to my ear. Becca's voice came through fast and slightly breathless, the way she got when something had already happened and she was catching up to it.Jake threw a party tonight. Like an actual party, his parents' house, and he played the recording again but this time it wasn't just fifteen people it was everyone. And he added to it. He had someone edit it or something because there's new stuff in it that wasn't there Monday and it sounds worse and people are filming it off the speaker and sending it around. I'm outside right now. Call me.I lowered the phone.Elle was still on the porch. She read my face and held out her hand for the phone. I gave it to her. She played
Last Updated: 2026-05-09
Chapter: BrunchChapter Twenty-Six — BrunchRoseanne's POVMy mother had made three things by the time I got home from school.A lemon cake, a tray of roasted vegetables nobody had asked for, and the particular atmosphere that filled our kitchen when she was anxious and had decided that productivity was the solution. She moved between the counter and the stove with that focused energy she got at dinner parties when she was managing twelve people and two dietary restrictions. There were four of us eating tonight."She called me this morning," my mother said without turning around. "Sandra Harlan. About Easter. I didn't know what to say so I said we'd have to check the calendar.""That's fine, Mom.""It's not fine. We've had Easter plans for six weeks." She turned around. Her expression was the careful one, the one that meant she had a lot of feelings organized into a line and was releasing them one at a time. "I've known Sandra for four years. Book club, the school fundraiser. She brought us soup when
Last Updated: 2026-05-09
Chapter: MeridianChapter Twenty-Five — MeridianElle's POVThursday came faster than I was ready for.I spent Wednesday clean. No contact with Richard, no contact with Jake, no drama. I picked up Tony's wages in the morning, three weeks at once, nine hundred and change in an envelope he handed me without making it a thing. Roseanne's transfer landed in my account by noon. By two o'clock I had twenty-seven hundred in cash and an appointment with Vince set for three.Vince's guy met me in the parking lot of a laundromat on Crescent, which was apparently how these things worked. I handed over the envelope. He counted it without looking at me. Texted someone. Looked up."Remainder by the thirty-first," he said."That's the arrangement."He nodded and walked back to his car and that was it. No drama, no threat, nothing cinematic. Just a transaction. The remaining fifteen hundred sat in my account as a number I would figure out before the month ended.I drove home and stood in the shower for ten minutes and
Last Updated: 2026-05-09
Chapter: MotherChapter Twenty-Four — MotherElle's POVI read the text four times.Each time it said the same thing. Four words, no punctuation at the end, the kind of sentence that did not need it because the weight was already there.I know about your mother.My first thought was practical. What exactly did he know, and how. My mother was not a public figure. She was a divorced woman with a drinking problem and a loan shark debt in a mid-sized town. Nothing about her was remarkable except the specific shape of her trouble, and that trouble was not in any record Richard Harlan should have access to.Which meant someone told him. Or he had someone who found things out. A man with political and business ties did not dig through people's backgrounds himself. He made a call and someone else dug.My second thought was Roseanne, already in class, not knowing this had landed.I did not go after her. She was in the middle of a school day and this was not something I was going to drop through a text. I went
Last Updated: 2026-05-06
Chapter: RichardChapter Twenty-Three — RichardElle's POVI played the voicemail a second time.Same voice. Same measured tone. No threat in it, no edge, just a man who was used to people returning his calls because not returning them had consequences he did not need to spell out.I sat in the car for a few minutes after. The street was empty and the neighborhood was asleep and I had Richard Harlan's voice sitting in my phone like a live thing.The smart move was to not call back. To sleep on it, talk to Roseanne in the morning, maybe think about whether I needed someone older in my corner before I walked into whatever Richard Harlan considered a conversation. Paul Calvert came to mind. A man who had already called Richard out once today.I did not call back.I drove home, checked the house, found my mother gone to Aunt Karen's the way I had asked. The rooms were quiet and clean in the way they only were when she was not in them. I made toast, stood at the kitchen counter and ate it, and thought thro
Last Updated: 2026-05-06
The stepbrother I ran from is my new professor.
“Tell me,” he said, low and dangerous. “Tell me who this cunt belongs to.”
“You,” I panted, spreading wider, shameless. “It’s yours—please, Micaiah—”
“Come on my cock,” he ordered through gritted teeth. “Show me how much you love being fucked by me.”
★☆
Maliya comes home after two years abroad, hoping everything she ran from has finally cooled. But the moment she steps through the door, she realizes nothing has changed—especially not the one person she never wanted to face again.
Micaiah.
Her stepbrother. Her almost. Her reason for disappearing.
She plans to keep her distance, start classes, rebuild her life… until her parents drop the news: they’ve transferred her to a new university, the one where Micaiah works as a professor. And they’re leaving for a three-month honeymoon, meaning she and Micaiah will be living in the same house. Alone.
Maliya tells herself she can handle it.
But Micaiah has his own ideas about unfinished business.
Three months isn’t long… unless you’re stuck with the one person you swore you’d never fall for again.
Read
Chapter: coatChapter Eighty-Three — Coat⚔Micaiah's POV⚔I read the text from where I was standing and felt something cold move through my chest.Maliya was looking at me with her hand still extended, phone screen facing my direction, waiting. I walked toward her and took the phone and read it again like the second time would change what it said.It didn't.I handed it back."What did you take from his coat," she said.I turned and walked to the front door. She followed me inside and I heard her close it behind her. I went to the kitchen, not because I wanted anything from it but because I needed somewhere to stand while I thought.She came in after me and leaned against the counter with her arms folded."Micaiah.""The necklace wasn't the only thing in his pocket," I said.She waited."There was a drive. Small, nothing that would stand out if you didn't know what you were looking at. I took it because a man who comes back early from his honeymoon with a flash drive in his coat pocket is a man car
Last Updated: 2026-05-05
Chapter: confirmedChapter Eighty-Two — Confirmed★Maliya's POV★He didn't deny it.That was the thing. We were standing in the stairwell and I'd just said what I'd been sitting on for days and he looked at me and didn't deny it. No deflection, no confusion, no what are you talking about. Just a long look that confirmed everything I'd already decided was true.I started walking down the stairs.He followed.Neither of us said anything until we pushed out through the ground floor exit into the side parking lot. His car was close. He unlocked it and I got in and he came around the driver's side and we sat there for a second with the engine off."How long have you known," he said."I suspected from chapter one," I said. "The timing of the first message. The night I came home, before dinner, before anyone outside this house knew I was back." I looked at him. "It narrowed down fast.""And you kept talking to the account anyway.""Yes.""Why."I thought about how to answer that honestly without handing him to
Last Updated: 2026-05-05
Chapter: BrotherChapter Eighty-One — Brother⚔Micaiah's POV⚔I hadn't said that name out loud in two years.Maliya was staring at me with her phone still extended between us and I was looking at the paused footage and trying to decide how much of what just came out of my mouth I could take back. The answer was none of it. It was already out there, sitting in the hallway between us, too big to step around.I took the phone from her hand and watched the footage from the beginning.Forty seconds. Kieran and Marcus standing between two cars, close enough that whatever they were saying wasn't meant to travel. Marcus had his back mostly to the camera but I knew his posture the same way you know anyone you grew up watching. The way he held his shoulders. The way he turned his head when he was making a point he wanted to land.I'd spent twenty years knowing that posture.I handed the phone back."Marcus Veil is your uncle," Maliya said. Not a question."My father's younger brother. He dropped the Anderson na
Last Updated: 2026-05-01
Chapter: watchedChapter Eighty — Watched★Maliya's POV★Stephanie had been talking for ten minutes straight and I hadn't heard a word she said.I knew she was talking about some guy from her modeling agency because she'd said his name three times and made a face each time, but beyond that I had nothing. My brain was somewhere else entirely. Sitting in Micaiah's car replaying that message on a loop.You need to tell Micaiah about me.I hadn't. I'd sat next to him the whole drive and said nothing and then spent the rest of the morning convincing myself I was waiting for the right moment when really I just didn't know how to hand him that particular grenade.Hey, the person you've been looking for has been in your phone for weeks. Surprise."Maliya."I looked up. Stephanie was staring at me."Where are you right now.""Here. Sorry. Keep going."She gave me the look she'd perfected over the past few weeks, the one that said she didn't believe me but wasn't going to push. Then she went back to the agency
Last Updated: 2026-05-01
Chapter: footageChapter Seventy-Nine — Footage⚔Micaiah's POV⚔I knew something was wrong before she said a word.Maliya had been quiet the whole drive, which wasn't unusual. But there's a difference between someone who has nothing to say and someone who's sitting on something they haven't decided what to do with yet. She was watching the road the whole time with her phone face down in her lap and her jaw set in that particular way that meant her brain was working faster than she was letting on.I parked and she got out before I cut the engine.I let her go.First class was mine. I stood at the front of the room and taught and watched her in the third row not look at me, which was its own kind of looking. She took notes. Asked one question that was sharper than anything anyone else in the room had offered all morning. Two students near the back were visibly surprised she'd said anything at all.I called on her once near the end just to see what she'd do.She answered without hesitating and then went
Last Updated: 2026-04-28
Chapter: The NameChapter Seventy-Eight — The Name★Maliya's POV★I didn't sleep.I tried. Lay flat on my back with the lamp off and my phone on my chest and stared at the ceiling until my eyes adjusted to the dark and then kept staring. The anonymous account's last message was still open. Lock your door. Like whatever he knew was bad enough that a locked door was the first thing he thought of.I'd locked it.That was the part that scared me most. That I'd done it without arguing.I got up at six, showered, and came downstairs to find Micaiah already in the kitchen. He was dressed for school, coffee made, standing at the counter going through something on his phone with the focused expression he got when something was wrong and he was trying not to show it.He looked up when I came in."You slept," he said."Barely."He nodded and poured me a coffee without being asked. I took it and sat at the counter and we did the quiet morning thing we'd been doing since I came back. Careful. Measured. Like two peo
Last Updated: 2026-04-08
LOGIN
