Novels by Uyai Jimmy

Lydia's POVI had been calm for exactly forty seven minutes.From the moment I walked out of that facility with the sound of Ava's voice behind me, through the car ride back across the city, through the elevator ride up to his floor, through the walk down the corridor that smelled of antiseptic and fresh flowers that his mother had sent because that was the kind of thing his mother did, appearances above everything else.Forty seven minutes of calm.Then my phone buzzed.I almost didn't look at it. I was already pushing open the door to his room, already arranging my face into the expression I had been wearing for weeks now.But something made me stop.Maybe it was the number. Unfamiliar. No name attached.Maybe it was the single word before the attachment.*Proof.*I stood in the doorway of my husband's hospital room and opened the message.And I read it.And then I read it again.Because the first time my brain refused to process it. Not because it was complicated. Because it was si

TThe first time in the suite had been desperate and hungry and electric, two people colliding after too long apart, too much history between them, too many things unsaid finding their way out through touch instead of words.The second time Lydia was present for every single moment of it.She noticed everything.The way Ava's breath changed when Lydia touched the back of her neck. The way her fingers curled into the sheets. The way she said Lydia's name like it was something she had been saving up. Like it was something she had missed the specific shape of in her mouth.Lydia filed all of it away.She was good at that now. Filing things away. Noticing without reacting. Feeling without showing. She had learned it in boardrooms and hospital waiting rooms and in the particular school of hard lessons that Damian had been running for years without realizing he was teaching her anything at all."Stay," Ava said afterward.She was lying on her side, looking at Lydia with those eyes that had

Chapter 67The phone beeped once.Just once, but it cut through the heavy silence of the car like a blade through silk.Lydia had just pulled out of the hospital parking lot, her hands steady on the steering wheel even though her mind was anything but. The late afternoon sun pressed through the windshield, warm and indifferent, the kind of light that had no business being so beautiful on a day this ugly. She had walked into that hospital as a wife. She was leaving as something else entirely. She was not sure what word fit yet, but wife was no longer it.Damian. Rachel. The emails. The careful, deliberate lies stacked one on top of another like bricks in a wall she had been living inside without ever realising it was a prison.She had suspected Ava. She had prepared herself for Ava. She had even, somewhere in the quiet part of herself she rarely visited, made a kind of peace with Ava.But Rachel?Rachel, who sat across from her in boardrooms with that composed, untouchable smile. Rach

RachelBy the time Rachel arrived at the office that morning, she had already convinced herself that everything was under control.The accident had shaken things, yesbut it hadn’t broken them. Damian was alive. Recovering. The board had been calmed, investors reassured, press statements carefully worded. She had worked through the night to make sure nothing slipped through the cracksThis was what she did best.She stepped into the elevator, straightened her jacket, and checked her reflection in the mirrored walls. Composed. Professional. Untouchable. The faint floral scent she wore was expensive reassuringly around her. Familiar. Safe.The elevator doors slid open.Something was wrong.Her assistant didn’t look up immediately when Rachel walked past her desk. That alone was unusual. Normally, there was an instant greeting, a flurry of updates.“Good morning,” Rachel said briskly.“Oh,good morning,” the assistant replied, a beat too late. “Mrs. Damian called earlier. She said she’d

LydiaThe morning at the hospital arrived without ceremony. No dramatic light through the windows.Just the same sterile brightness, humming machines, and the quiet weight pressing against my chest.I bent silently over my husband.Damian was still asleep. His breathing was steady now, deeper than it had been the night before, as though his body had finally decided to forgive him for surviving. Tubes ran from his arm, the oxygen mask resting loosely against his face. For the first time since the accident, he looked almost peaceful.A folded note lay on the bedside table, partly hidden beneath his phone.I picked it up.Take care, honey. Don’t think too much. I’ll be fine.My fingers tightened around the paper.The words were meant to soothe, to reassure. Once, they would have worked. Once, I would have clung to them like a prayer. But now they felt strangely hollow, like something written by a man who believed reassurance was the same thing as truth.My mind wandered despite myself, lo

The oxygen mask was suffocating, but it was also a shield. It allowed me to hide the grimace of fear that kept wanting to twist my face. I was staring at the ceiling, feeling every bruise from the minor wreck I’d actually been in,the one I’d staged to cover the real mess.Lydia was perched on the edge of the chair, looking utterly worn out. The relief in her eyes when I "woke up" had been a shot of pure, powerful adrenaline."You really scared me, Damian," she murmured, her voice rough with fatigue.I managed a dry, painful whisper past the edge of the mask. "I... I know. I'm sorryShe shook her head slowly, looking at her hands. "Don't apologize for surviving. Just tell me what happened. The police report was so vague.For a seconds I thought I had lose you “"It's... hazy," I rasped. "I remember the lights. Too fast. Trying to swerve. Then... pain. And the smell of smoke." I paused, forcing a shudder. "I just... crawled out. I didn't want to die alone on the side of the road. I want