All Chapters of A Kiss For Every Bruise : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

160 Chapters

What Mothers Choose

Author's POV Camilla knew something shifted before anyone spoke. Elenna Cruize did not answer her morning calls immediately anymore. Forty minutes yesterday. Twenty-three this morning. Insignificant to ordinary people but not to Camilla.For her, attachment patterns mattered. Emotional dependency revealed itself through rhythm...response time, tone changes, hesitation and eye contact. And Luciana had begun hesitating. Which meant Gwen was succeeding and that was totally unacceptable.Camilla stood silently inside her penthouse office overlooking the city while one of Kai’s remaining operatives waited near the door, nervous. As he should be. “You sent the photographs too early,” Camilla said calmly. The man swallowed. “We thought pressure would destabilize her.”Camilla turned slowly as cold irritation sharpened her features. “And instead?” “She’s becoming more reliant on Salvador.” Exactly...Idiot. Fear only isolated people when they lacked emotional anchors. Gwen now had Adrian, Seb

The Invitation

GwenMy mother avoided looking at me the entire morning. Not obviously and that was the worst part. It happened in fragments. A pause too long before answering me, eyes sliding away during breakfast, hands trembling slightly whenever Camilla’s name surfaced in conversation.Hairline fractures. That was what Adrian called them once during one of our late-night conversations. “Control rarely collapses dramatically,” he had said quietly. “It breaks in tiny uncomfortable pieces first.” At the time, I had been talking about myself. Now I realized he could have been describing my family too.I stood near the kitchen windows watching rain collect against the garden stonework while Matteo scrolled through financial reports across the island counter. The house felt restless lately. Like something beneath it had begun shifting structurally.“You didn’t sleep,” Matteo observed without looking up. “Neither did you.” “Fair.” A faint smile tugged briefly at his mouth before disappearing. Silence se

Dinner With the Devil

GwenThe house felt much more hollow after my mother left. I sat curled on the library sofa long after sunset pretending to read while rain lashed softly against the tall windows. The book remained open to the same page for nearly forty minutes. I kept hearing her answer in my head. "Yes." But fractured slightly around the edges. Like belief forced through fear.Matteo eventually entered carrying two glasses of wine. “You’re brooding theatrically,” he informed me. “I learned from Sebastian.” “Fair.” I accepted the glass quietly.The library lights glowed warm against dark wooden shelves while thunder rolled faintly beyond the estate. As children, storms used to bring us here together with blankets and stolen desserts while our father pretended not to notice.The memory hurt unexpectedly. Because suddenly I realized that before Camilla, before Mason, before Kai, before all the violence…I had once belonged somewhere effortlessly. I missed that girl sometimes. “She’ll come back,” Matteo

The Thing About Panic

GwenCamilla left ten minutes later. She kissed my mother’s cheek softly near the doorway, spoke in gentle reassuring tones, then glided back toward her waiting car with the same composed elegance she wore everywhere.Irregardless, I had seen the panic she so dearly, tried to conceal. Not because she feared exposure immediately. It was because she was losing emotional certainty. And people like Camilla depended on certainty the way normal people depended on oxygen.The front doors closed behind her and a heavy silence flooded the foyer instantly. My mother stood motionless near the staircase, arms folded tightly around herself as though holding something inside from spilling apart. “Mom,” I said carefully. “I’m tired.” The words came too quickly. Prepared and defensive. My chest tightened. “You were crying.” “No.” The denial arrived automatically.I stared at her quietly. She used to hate dishonesty. When we were children, she once made Sebastian apologize to me for lying about breaki

The Call at 2:13 A.M.

GwenI couldn’t breathe properly after that. The foyer conversation ended eventually, but not really. Nothing resolved. Nothing settled.My mother locked herself inside her bedroom before anyone could stop her. My father remained downstairs staring into untouched whiskey for nearly an hour afterward while Sebastian quietly made calls from the study.Matteo hovered. That was the only word for it. Hovering like he wanted to protect something fragile but didn’t yet know how. And me? I went numb. Not emotionally empty but worse because I felt overfull.I stood beneath scorching water for almost forty minutes after midnight trying to wash off the feeling of hearing my own mother ask: What happens to me if Camilla goes? As if losing her frightened her more than losing me once already had. The thought hollowed something deep inside my chest.By the time I changed into sleep clothes, the storm outside had worsened. Rain battered violently against the windows while distant thunder rolled acros

The Woman In the Mirror

GwenThe next morning, my mother wouldn’t come downstairs. Mrs. Alvarez eventually brought breakfast trays up to her room after several failed attempts from my father to coax her out. Nobody said the word breakdown. But it lingered over the house anyway.I sat at the dining table untouched coffee cooling between my hands while Sebastian worked silently from his tablet across from me. Matteo paced constantly. Like movement might stop him from thinking too hard. “She answered Camilla’s calls,” he muttered suddenly. Sebastian didn’t look up. “How many?” “Three times already.” My stomach tightened. Of course she did.Emotional dependency always intensified during instability. Last night’s confrontation would have driven my mother directly toward the person she associated with safety. Camilla knew that. Which meant she was probably reinforcing the attachment right now.The thought made nausea rise sharply inside me. Sebastian finally looked up from the tablet. “She’s isolating her emotiona

Countermove

Author's POV The porcelain cup shattered against the wall. Tea spluttered across white marble and cream silk curtains in a violent spray. Nobody in the room moved. Not Dr. Weston. Not the two operatives standing near the doorway. Not the house staff quietly lowering their eyes. Camilla stood motionless at the center of the sitting room, chest rising once, twice then relaxing completely. “Repeat what Sebastian said.” The operative swallowed. “He told Elena that emotional dependency created under manipulation can feel like grief attachment.” Camilla’s expression did not change. Which made her infinitely more frightening. “And Elena?” The man hesitated. “She listened.” Silence. Terrible silence. Camilla walked slowly toward the ruined teacup fragments scattered across the marble floor. Six years....Six careful years threading herself into the emotional fabric of the Cruize family. And now Gwen Cruize was pulling at the seams harder than expected. Not because Gwen was smarter. Not be

Splinters

GwenI should have known peace wouldn’t last longer than a few hours. The morning with my mother had felt fragile but real. Not healing exactly, but movement. Like watching ice crack slowly enough to hear water beneath it. By evening, everything fractured again.I found her in the east sitting room just after sunset. She was standing beside the fireplace gripping her phone so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. The curtains were open behind her, rain-dark skies swallowing the last traces of daylight outside. And she looked terrified. Actually terrified.“Mom?” She turned too quickly and guilt flashed across her face before disappearing. “What happened?” “Nothing.” Of course, I knew that was a lie but I did not point it out. Instead, I moved closer carefully. Her breathing was uneven again. Not grief this time but fear. “Did Camilla call?” Silence.That was answer enough. Something cold moved through me immediately. “What did she say?” My mother looked away. “She’s worried about me.” I

Even Broken Light Fights Darkness

GwenMy mother dropped the papers. Not dramatically, just that her fingers simply stopped holding them. The pages slipped softly onto the sitting room carpet while silence swallowed the entire space whole. Nobody moved immediately. Not Sebastian. Not me. Even the rain outside seemed quieter somehow.My mother stared at the scattered documents like they were written in another language entirely. “She wouldn’t…” Her voice failed halfway through the sentence. “Camilla wouldn’t…” But she could not finish it anymore. Because the evidence existed physically now. Numbers. Transfers. Dates. Reality.Sebastian crouched slowly to gather the papers again, his expression gentler than I had seen in weeks. “Mom.” She backed away from him instinctively. Fear flashed through her face again. Not fear of Sebastian. Fear of what accepting this would do to her. “I defended her,” she whispered.The words tore through me unexpectedly. Not because they were new. Because this time she sounded horrified by it

When Adrian Walked In

GwenThe house changed when Adrian arrived. Nobody announced him and no dramatic entrance followed. And yet the entire atmosphere shifted the second his car rolled through the estate gates.Maybe because everyone in this family still remembered who Adrian Salvador used to be before my disappearance fractured everything. He was sharp, controlled and impossibly difficult to intimidate.Or maybe because some instinctive part of all of us understood that Adrian entering this situation meant things were no longer merely emotional. They were becoming dangerous. I stood near the foyer windows when he arrived.Rain clung to the shoulders of his black coat as he stepped inside, tall and composed beneath the warm amber lights. His expression was unreadable at first glance. But I knew him better than that. Tension lived in the set of his jaw tonight. His eyes found me immediately. And for one terrifying second…I forgot how to breathe. Because this was the first time I had willingly asked him to

...

11 12 13 14 15 16

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP