Nobela ni Ndudirim Stanley

The silence was unnatural.Not peaceful. Not healing.It was the kind of silence that settles after a scream—thick, expectant, listening for echoes.Amara sat on the edge of the bed, one hand pressed to her lower belly. Thirteen weeks. The second trimester had ushered in a strange clarity—her nausea had ebbed, her appetite returned. But something in her body still buzzed like an unresolved chord. A sense of almost. Like the world around her was holding its breath.The note still sat on the nightstand, unfolded. Liam had wanted to burn it. But she told him no. Sometimes, the enemy leaves a breadcrumb without meaning to. A word, a tone. The way the S was signed—it wasn’t Sebastian’s handwriting. It wasn’t his style either.But it still screamed of him.She gently rubbed the underside of her bump. The tiny life forming within was steady, calm. Like it trusted her. That made her feel both courageous and crushed. Because she wasn’t sure she trusted herself.Not yet.The door creaked, and L

The crash was sharp. Not loud. Not thunderous. Just sharp enough to freeze Amara mid-step as she crossed the hallway.Glass.From the kitchen.She didn’t run. She walked—slow, like the sound had ruptured her ability to trust her senses. Liam was out. Tessa was still at the courthouse. No one else was supposed to be home.Her heartbeat slowed as she reached the threshold. A water glass had rolled off the counter, smashed into elegant shards across the tile floor. But it wasn’t the broken glass that held her still. It was the back door—ajar.Her breath caught. The wind couldn’t have done that. They had triple locks. Security.A piece of paper was folded on the island.Her name.Hands trembling, she unfolded it:"Even shattered things reflect. Look closer. - S"She dropped the note as though it burned. The sound of it hitting the floor was too soft to break the terror inside her chest. She backed away, step by step, until her spine hit the hallway wall.Her phone.She ran upstairs to get

Tessa hadn’t stepped outside in two days.Her ankle monitor was a leash, but it wasn’t the reason. Something felt wrong. Off. Like the air in her apartment had changed. Like it belonged to someone else now, and she was merely borrowing it.She kept the blinds half-shut and sat on the rug, surrounded by papers. Police reports. Court documents. Hospital scans. A scribbled timeline. Red string wouldn’t have made it clearer: the man she hit was no random pedestrian.He was placed.And somehow, everything pointed back to Amara.She picked up the photo again. The morgue release form had a blurry attachment of the man’s face. Mid-thirties. Scar above his brow. She could swear she’d seen him somewhere—not in life, but in Sebastian’s background. An old picture on a shelf? A reflection in a mirror? It buzzed in the back of her brain like a half-remembered dream.A knock on her door made her jolt.One knock. Pause. Then two more.Her heart dropped. That wasn’t the rhythm of a stranger.She rose

The underground garage was colder than Amara expected. The air clung to her skin like damp cloth, dense with fumes and something sour—fear, maybe. She had insisted on coming with Liam this time. No more waiting at home like a porcelain doll while secrets crashed through their lives. If the danger was real, she needed to look it in the eye.They were meeting Elliot’s contact—an ex-detective named Raymond Kessler. He didn’t do phone calls. Only face-to-face.Liam parked close to the stairwell. “If anything feels off, we leave. No explanations.”Amara nodded. She was wearing a hoodie, no makeup, a cap pulled low. Untraceable, but still visibly anxious. She kept her hands in her pockets to hide the trembling.They walked in silence until they reached a door marked “Electrical.” Liam knocked twice, paused, then once more.The door cracked open.“You brought her,” the man inside said flatly. Middle-aged. Thick accent. One eye clouded with scar tissue.“She’s part of this,” Liam said.Kessle

The server room smelled like ozone and risk.Liam wiped sweat from his brow as Elliot disconnected a black drive from the back of the rack-mounted unit. The low whir of cooling fans filled the room like white noise over a battlefield.“You sure this is it?” Liam asked, watching the security feed flicker on Elliot’s laptop.“Julian March doesn’t leave fingerprints,” Elliot replied. “But he leaves footprints. This system pings one of his offshore data mirrors. We just pulled a direct line.”Liam glanced at the red blinking lights and the unauthorized entry timestamp in the top corner of the monitor. “We have four minutes, tops.”Elliot tucked the drive into a false-bottom case. “Then we go dark. I’ve got a scrambler upstairs to fry the logs. Once this place resets, it’ll look like nothing happened.”They bolted from the room.---Amara stepped into the women’s health clinic under a bright, impersonal sky. It was the clinic her OB had referred her to for a routine prenatal follow-up—but

The doorbell rang just after noon. Amara froze in the kitchen, a spoonful of yogurt hovering midair. Her eyes darted to the window. Liam was out. Tessa hadn’t confirmed whether she was coming over. No one was expected.Cautiously, she padded barefoot to the door, heart thudding. She checked the peephole. A man in a slate gray suit stood there, briefcase in hand, neutral expression painted with professionalism.She opened the door a sliver. “Yes?”“Miss West?” the man asked. “I’m Arthur Vale. Legal counsel assigned to Tessa Monroe’s case.”Her spine stiffened. “She didn’t tell me anyone was coming.”“It was last-minute. May I come in?”She hesitated. “Do you have ID?”He produced a card, too quickly. It looked real, but her instincts kicked in. Something felt... off. The edges were too clean. The font too generic. Still, she was cornered. If he was legit and she refused, it could mess with Tessa’s case.She opened the door.He stepped inside, eyes immediately scanning the living room.