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Chapter ninety eight:
publish date:
2026-07-15 16:41:45
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RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and twenty :
The CircleCaden’s POVDavid sent the archaeological permit application on Wednesday.I know because he copied me on it, which he’d started doing with everything related to the site — not because he needed my input specifically but because he’d decided I was part of it and part of it meant being kept informed even when there was nothing to act on.I appreciated that about him.The specific inclusion of someone who understood that knowing was different from needing to do something about it.The application went to three separate bodies.State historic preservation office.City planning department.A tribal historic preservation office, because Dr. Mehta had been specific on that point — a site of this age and type in this region required consultation with the relevant tribal nations before any excavation proceeded.That was the right thing.David had known it before Dr. Mehta said it.He’d already made contact.The meeting with tribal representatives was scheduled for the following we
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and nineteen:
The MeetingAria’s POVNine am arrived with everyone.David had the centre unlocked by eight thirty and by nine the building had more people in it than it had held since the groundbreaking ceremony.Dr. Mehta at the front.Her two colleagues with laptops and printed survey maps.David beside her, notebook open, the specific focused stillness of someone who had been waiting two weeks for this exact morning.Thomas, who had driven himself and arrived at eight fifty-five with coffee from David’s recommended place because he’d learned that was the currency this family ran on.Leah and Rachel side by side, Leah with her phone face down on the table because she’d decided this required her full attention and her phone was incompatible with full attention.Sophie with her camera running from the moment she arrived.William and James and Eleanor on the video call — David had set up a screen at the front of the room, the three of them visible from Edinburgh, Eleanor already with her notebook, J
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and eighteen:
Two WeeksCaden’s POVDr. Mehta’s team worked for two weeks.Not dramatically. Not with the urgency of a television excavation where significant findings arrived every twenty minutes. The actual work of archaeological assessment was methodical and quiet and required a specific patience that David understood instinctively and that I was learning.Ground-penetrating radar first.Then soil sampling at controlled depths.Then the specific analysis that took time because it required time — the careful reading of what the ground had kept and what it meant.David went to the site every day.Sometimes twice.He stood at the perimeter of the assessment area with his notebook and watched and occasionally asked Dr. Mehta questions that she answered with the professional directness of someone who respected people who asked precise questions.I went four times in the two weeks.Not every day — I had Voss Industries, I had the board, I had the ongoing machinery of a company that didn’t pause for a
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and seventeen:
MondayAria’s POVThe weekend between the groundbreaking and Monday was the strangest two days I’d had since the month everything happened.Not bad strange.Just — suspended. The specific quality of time when you know something significant is coming and the waiting has its own texture.We went to the site on Saturday.Just Caden and me. No ceremony, no group. Just us walking through the building in the morning, the centre quiet and empty the way new buildings are quiet before they’ve been inhabited enough to have their own sounds.I stood at the glass panel.Looked down at the foundation.My father’s foundation, visible, exactly as David had designed it.And below that — one point four metres down, in the dark of the soil — whatever the ground was remembering.“It’s down there,” I said.“Yes,” Caden said, beside me.“We can’t see it,” I said.“Not yet,” he said.“Monday,” I said.“Monday,” he said.I stood on the glass and looked down and thought about my father walking this ground in
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and sixteen:
Bigger Than We ThoughtCaden’s POVJames called William at one in the morning.I heard William answer from the kitchen — his voice changing register the way it changed when something architectural had arrived that required full attention, the specific shift from conversational to focused.Aria was still on the floor beside me.Neither of us had moved.The kitchen floor had become the place we processed things apparently and we’d both decided that was fine.I texted James.What did you find.His response came while he was still on the phone with William.The soil survey. The organic material at one point four metres. I’ve been cross-referencing with the city’s historical geological records. Caden, that material is consistent with a specific type of deposit found at sites of prolonged human habitation going back significantly further than 1890.How far, I sent.Potentially pre-colonial, he sent. The composition. The depth. The specific markers the surveyors noted. A pause. I need to ta
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and fifteen:
He KnewAria’s POVI read Thomas’s message three times.Each time the same words.He knew what was underneath. He chose it because of what was underneath.My father.Standing on that site in 1994.Feeling something in the ground.Choosing it not just because of zoning and price but because of what the place had always been.A gathering place.A hundred and thirty years of people coming together in that specific spot, the specific accumulated intention of a place that had been used for exactly this, over and over, before anyone thought to build anything permanent on it.And my father had felt it.And chosen it.And laid his foundation on top of all of it.And died before he could build what he’d started.And now we’d built it.On everything he’d felt.On everything that had been there before him.I sat down on the kitchen floor.Not dramatically. My legs just made the decision and I respected it the way I’d been respecting my legs’ decisions all year.Caden was beside me immediately.N
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter five
CadenI’ve destroyed men for less.Built empires from nothing, buried competitors without blinking, sat across boardroom tables from men twice my age and made them sweat through their suits just by staying quiet. I have never in forty-two years of living lost control of myself. Not once. Not over a
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter four
AriaThe lock clicked.Loudest sound I’d ever heard in my life.I stepped back from the door, heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat, and waited. One second. Two. The towel was wrapped tight around my chest and my hair was dripping onto my shoulders and every single nerve ending I had
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter Three
AriaI typed back immediately. Like an idiot.That’s creepy. That’s actually creepy and you know it.Then Is it.Not a question. A statement. The kind that sits in your chest and makes you feel things you shouldn’t.I locked my phone and threw it onto the cushion beside me and pressed my face int
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter two
AriaI stared at that message for a solid four minutes.Then I typed back: Who is this?Three dots appeared immediately. Like he’d been waiting.You know who this is.I put the phone face down on the nightstand and pressed both hands over my face and just laid there in the dark doing absolutely no
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