Novels by Circeleari

The thing about almost-things is that they’re worse than nothing.Nothing, you can handle. Nothing is familiar. Nothing is just Tuesday in the Morozov estate, same as every other Tuesday—cold floors, colder people, and me pretending I don’t notice either. But almost-things? Almost-things leave a residue. A warmth you didn’t ask for that sits under your skin like a low fever, and you wake up the next morning and catch yourself smiling at the ceiling before your brain fully boots up and screams at you to stop that immediately.I stop that immediately.I stare at the ceiling for exactly three more seconds, then I get up, wash my face with water cold enough to qualify as psychological warfare, and give myself a very firm talking-to in the mirror. “Last night was a carnival,” I tell my reflection. Cotton candy and a rusty rollercoaster and a child who needed someone. That’s all it was. You grabbed his shirt on a ride. You stood next to him in the dark. People do that. “People do that a

The fireworks are still cracking open the sky.But the warmth from earlier— that stupid, fragile, almost-thing— is already bleeding out.Irene stumbles toward us like a wounded dove who somehow managed to touch up her mascara on the way over. Her phone clutched to her chest. Eyes wide and glassy and aimed directly at Konstantin like he’s the only lighthouse left in a storm she personally orchestrated.“I was feeling so much better,” she breathes, voice catching in all the right places. “And I didn’t want to be left behind.”She says it soft. Helpless. The kind of helpless that takes practice.My chest tightens. Not from jealousy— I refuse to call it that— but from the sheer mechanical precision of it. The timing. The wobble in her lip. The way her hand finds Konstantin’s arm like it belongs there, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and she’s just so relieved.Konstantin says nothing.He doesn’t pull away either.I feel the shift immediately. The temperature of the whole ev

The fireworks are still cracking in the sky behind me, but the world’s gone dim.It’s as someone shoved me out of the spotlight mid-scene. And handed Irene the mic.She stumbles closer, all dainty steps and calculated breathlessness, clutching her phone like it’s her grandma’s ashes.“I was feeling so much better . . . and I didn’t want to be left behind.”She says it softly, a small smile, big eyes. Straight to Konstantin as her life support. Leonid stiffens at my side. I feel his little hand tighten around mine. Not Konstantin’s.Mine.He glares at her like a pissed-off cat. “I thought you were dying earlier.”I nearly choke on a laugh, but bite it back. Irene laughs it off. A breathy, helpless thing. “I just needed rest . . . but I didn’t want to miss out. We’re family, right?”Sure. Family.The kind that poisons your tea and smiles while you drink it.Konstantin doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move either. Which is worse, somehow.Because Irene takes that as a yes and latches on

The car ride feels like getting shoved between a live wire and a ticking time bomb. Leonid’s on my left, fidgeting like he’s got caffeine for blood.Konstantin’s on my right, legs spread, arms crossed, brooding like he’s plotting world domination—or someone’s death. Probably mine.I reach for the window latch just to breathe, because the tension in here is thick enough to bottle and sell as an aphrodisiac to desperate housewives. As I lean slightly, my arm brushes his. Hard. Muscle and heat and everything I shouldn’t be thinking about.His voice comes low. Mocking. Dangerous. “You that desperate to breathe near me, zayka?”I freeze. Of fucking course. Before I can bite out a retort, a lollipop hits his shoulder. Leonid doesn’t even blink. “Stop flirting with her, old man.” I snort so hard I choke on my own spit.Konstantin turns slowly, red eyes narrowing on his brat of a cousin like he’s one sarcastic comment away from putting him up for adoption. “Say that again,” he says.Leonid gr

I should’ve drowned myself in the bathtub the moment the words “trio date” left my mouth.Because now, I’m standing in front of the damn closet, regretting everything about my life, my choices, and most of all, this stupid idea.I mutter curses under my breath as I dig through the mess of silk and lace in my section of the closet, trying to find a dress that doesn’t scream “please choke me with daddy’s money” or “take me hostage.” Something nice. Something normal. Something that’ll make me blend in while being third-wheeled by a bratty child and my emotionally constipated captor-husband.And just when I think I’ll finally get three minutes of peace, I hear his voice.“I need to grab a suit.”Konstantin’s tone is dry. Casual. As if he hasn’t avoided stepping foot in this room for weeks like the fucking plague.I whip around. “You have another goddamn closet. Use that.”He shrugs, already walking in like this is his space. Like he didn’t say on our honeymoon night that he couldn’t stoma

The lounge smells like chlorine and sugar. Leonid’s curled up on the far end of the long cream couch, his stupid tablet on his lap, and for once, he’s not scowling at me like I just kicked his puppy. I sit on the opposite end, legs tucked under me, a little awkward.The sun from the giant glass doors spills across the marble floor and catches in his dark hair. We’ve been here the entire afternoon. God, the things I do for this kid already. He keeps pretending he’s not looking at me. But he is. Every few seconds, his eyes flick up from his screen and shoot me a weird little glare that isn’t really a glare.“What?” I mutter, quirking a brow. His lips purse.“You don’t sit like a normal adult.”Okay. That’s . . . new.“Sorry,” I say with a snort, stretching one leg out and resting my arm over the back of the couch. “Is there a formal seating posture you’re expecting from your soon-to-be pool buddy?”Leonid’s head jerks up. “I didn’t say you could swim with me.”“You didn’t not say it,” I

FIVE YEARS LATERGerald is on the counter again.I know this before I even come downstairs because I can hear Dante saying “get down” in the voice he uses when he has already said it four times and is now simply saying it for the record, knowing full well it will accomplish nothing.Gerald has never once in five years gotten down from anywhere voluntarily.I come into the kitchen.Gerald is on the counter.Dante is at the stove. He’s in a grey shirt—always a grey shirt, I have stopped questioning this, I believe he has forty of them—and he is making breakfast with one hand and gesturing at the cat with the other, and Gerald is sitting directly next to the chopping board with the supreme unbothered energy of a cat who knows he is untouchable.He is untouchable because Daxton will riot if anyone moves him.“Morning,” I say.Dante looks at me over his shoulder. The look he gives me every morning, the one that still does something to my central nervous system even after all this time, war

“Say that again,” I say.Dante doesn’t answer. He’s looking at the phone like it’s something that bit him, and for a man who walked out of a warehouse full of people who wanted him dead approximately four minutes ago looking completely unbothered, the fact that a phone call is doing this to his face tells me everything.“Dante.” I put my hand on his arm. “Say that again.”“Judge Callum Sorin,” he says. “My father.”I stare at him.“Your father,” I repeat. “Is a corrupt judge. Who was working with the people who tried to have you killed. Who is now calling you directly after we just sent evidence of his crimes to a journalist.”“Yes.”“And he’s Daxton’s grandfather.”“Biologically.”“Dante.”“I know.”The phone is still ringing.“Are you going to answer it?” I ask.He looks at me. Then he picks up.He doesn’t say anything. He just waits.A voice comes through the speaker, older, clipped, the voice of a man who has spent decades being the most important person in every room he enters. “

“How is that possible?” I say. “Your people aren’t in position yet. You said seven.”“I know what I said.” Dante is already texting. Both thumbs, fast, the phone Rafe handed over replaced with his own. “They moved because Rafe’s call spooked them. They think we’re onto the location.”“We are onto the location.”“They don’t know that yet. They just know something shifted.” He looks up. “My people can be there in forty. The Kavris will be set up in twenty.”I do that math. “That’s a twenty minute gap.”“Yes.”“Dante—”“I know.”“That’s twenty minutes of you walking into a room full of people who want you dead with no backup and a hard drive they’re going to take the second they see it.”“They won’t see it,” he says. “Because you’re not bringing it in.”I stare at him. “What?”“The drive stays with you. Outside.” He holds my eyes. “You are my backup. If I’m not out in twenty minutes, you send it. I set up a journalist contact years ago, a dead drop, it auto-submits if I trigger it from m

I stare at him for another full minute.He doesn’t move. His sides rise and fall, the bandaging still clean and pale against all that black fur. The early light through the cabin’s one window cuts across the floor and lands just short of him, like even the sun is a little bit wary.You need to leave, I tell myself. Right now. Before he wakes up.But I grab the old wool blanket from the cot in the corner anyway and I spread it over him. As carefully as I can. He shifts once and I freeze, but he doesn’t wake.I back out of the cabin.Then I run.I run as far as I can* * *My father is already yelling before I get the door open.I slip into the kitchen, tie my hair back up from where it’d fallen loose, and get the pan on before he gets to the part of the yelling where he starts throwing things. Eggs. He likes his eggs over easy. If I break the yolk he makes me do it again. I’ve learned not to break the yolk.“Where were you?”“Out early.” I keep my back to him. “Sit down Sir, it’s

“Rafe,” I say.Dante doesn’t answer.Which is its own answer.I look in the side mirror. The second car is still there, two lengths behind us, keeping pace. Rafe behind the wheel, both hands visible, completely normal, completely calm.The way he’s been the entire time.“Tell me I’m wrong,” I say.Dante is quiet for a long moment. “You’re not wrong.”“Dante—”“The way Vera knew we were at the mall,” he says. Low. Controlled. Like he’s working through it in real time and not loving where it lands. “She had a photo within the hour. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. Only Rafe knew.”“He could have had someone watching the house.”“The voicemail,” Dante says. “That night. It came three hours after we arrived at the mansion. Vera needed an inside location to send that fast. Someone told her the address the moment we pulled through the gate.”I think about Rafe at the mansion. First on the perimeter. First through the back door. First to say he’s back in the foyer while Vera was st

“Strangers,” Dante says.“A couple. Young. I think they have a cat.” I watch his face. “I’m sorry, did you want me to have kept the house I shared with the man I thought I’d accidentally killed?”He looks at me for a second. “Fair.”“Thank you.”“We’re still going.”“I know we are.”Daxton looks up from the couch. “Are we going on a road trip?”“Yes,” Dante says.“Can we stop for snacks?”“Daxton—” I start.“Yes,” Dante says.Daxton pumps his fist.I grab the wolf plushie off the cushion beside him and hand it over. “Shoes. Right feet this time.”He looks down. Looks back up. “I was testing you.”“Sure you were.”Rafe meets us at the car.He’s already heard — Dante called him on the way down Marcus’s stairs, two minutes, short sentences, the kind of conversation where both people already know the shape of the problem and just need to confirm the details. Now Rafe is leaning against the passenger door with his arms crossed and the expression he wears when he’s about to say something Da