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Chapter seventy eight:
publish date:
2026-07-07 20:23:12
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RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and twenty three
The National PictureAria’s POVRachel came to the house on Tuesday.Not the office. The house. Which told me she’d decided this conversation needed to happen somewhere that wasn’t professional, which from Rachel was its own kind of signal.She arrived at seven with her notebook and a bottle of wine she set on the kitchen counter without explanation, which told me the wine was for after rather than during because Rachel didn’t drink during work conversations.We sat at the kitchen table.Caden made tea and sat slightly back from the table, present but not central, the way he’d learned to be when something was mine to lead.Rachel opened her notebook.“The investigator’s findings,” she said. “I’ve spent the last two days going through everything he shared.” She looked at me. “Romano wasn’t operating alone. We knew that in a general sense — networks, people he’d placed, Mrs. Bertram, the financial structures. But this is different.”“Different how,” I said.“More organised,” she said. “
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and twenty two
William’s DrawingCaden’s POVHe sent it Sunday morning.A photograph of the notebook page. The cross-section, updated, the layers he’d been drawing since November finally complete.At the bottom — the circle. Eight metres diameter, drawn with the precision of someone who had been doing this for fifty years, the circular arrangement of the two-thousand-year-old structure rendered in the careful lines of architectural notation.Above it — the organic material, the soil layers, the depth markers.Above that — the foundation. David Cole, 1994. The forty-millimetre rebar, the concrete, the specific construction of a man who paid attention to what he was building on.Above that — the glass panel. The visibility layer. The thing that made everything below it seeable.And above all of it — the atrium. Eight metres. The same diameter. The light coming through at the angles William had calculated, reaching down through the glass panel to the foundation and beyond.Circle to circle.Two thousan
RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad. Chapter one hundred and twenty one
MayAria’s POVMay arrived and the city finally committed to spring.Not the tentative, still-deciding spring of March and April but actual spring — the kind that showed up in the trees properly, in the temperature, in the specific quality of light that changed from flat to dimensional, like someone had adjusted the contrast on the world.I noticed it on a Monday morning walking to Rachel’s office.The same walk I’d been taking since February.The same trees I’d noticed starting in April.Now fully themselves.Something about that felt exactly right.Sophie started filming properly in May.Not the capturing she’d been doing since April — the documentary work, the formal interviews, the structured filming of the building and the people and the story as it was being told.She was meticulous about it.She interviewed Dr. Mehta on a Tuesday.Forty minutes, technical and specific, Dr. Mehta explaining the circle, the depth, the age, the significance, in the precise language of someone who
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 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 one:
ARIAMoving back in with my mother was already humiliating enoughAdd her rich, terrifyingly attractive husband into the equation and what you get is me, standing outside a mansion in Minnesota at four in the afternoon, suitcase in hand, seriously reconsidering every life choice that led to this mo
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