Novels by EstherJames62327

Monet spent the entire flight home pondering the conversation she had with her mother and younger sister. In all her years, she never thought she'd hear herself say all those words: mother and sister. Her own family. But they weren't really her family. Her family was back in the heart of New York, waiting for her. Stephanie Jacobs hadn't been woman enough to face her choices. Their resemblance only spanned physically. The woman she'd become had nothing to do with Stephanie or the choices she's made. Thank you.” She whispered to herself but it was really for Mother Margaret and Richard. The house felt the same, that was the first thing Monet noticed. Not changed. Not unsettled. Not altered by everything that had happened in ways the world would recognise.Just, the same. The children’s laughter carried down the hallway, light and unrestrained. Something clattered in the kitchen. A voice—Carter’s—calling out something unintelligible, f

They did not stay long. There was nothing in the place that invited lingering.Not after the words had been said. Not after the truth had settled into something too solid to reshape.Monet stepped outside the wooden gate first. The air felt different.Not lighter. Just… clearer.Elara followed a few moments later.She didn’t look at Monet immediately. Didn’t speak.She stood a few feet away, arms folded—not defensively this time, but as if holding herself together in a way she hadn’t needed to before.For a while, neither of them said anything.There was no script for what came after.“She didn’t apologise,” Elara said finally.Monet paused, remembering the broken words she heard, then glanced at Elara, “No.”A pause.“I think I would have hated it if she did,” Elara admitted.Monet’s lips curved faintly. “Me too.”That small, unexpected agreement softened something.Not everything. But something.Elara let out a slow breath. “I don’t know what to do with this,” she said.It wasn’t an

Elara stormed out. Her foot falls fading into nothingness but still her presence remained. Her indignance remained. Monet was glad it remained. Something that heavy shouldn't have to shrink with Elara's absence. It shifted the air, cracked the stillness, left behind something louder than silence. The door closed softly behind her, and the quiet returned as if it had been waiting. Monet remained where she was. Stephanie did not sit again. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Up close, Monet could see it more clearly now—the fine lines time had written into Stephanie’s face, the absence of polish, of performance. There was no distance left to hide behind. Just a woman. Just the truth of her. “You look…” Stephanie started, then stopped. Monet tilted her head slightly. “Like what?” Stephanie exhaled, a faint, almost disbelieving sound. “Like someone I don’t get to claim.” The honesty of it settled between them, fragile and sharp. Monet didn’t soften. “You don’t.” Steph

The place was not what Monet expected.There were no towering gates. No rigid silence enforced by ritual or hierarchy. No sense of sacred A distance that would have made this easier to understand.It was… quiet.A coastal retreat tucked into the edge of something deliberately forgotten—white walls softened by time. Olive trees cast long, patient shadows. The kind of place people came to when they no longer wanted to be found but still needed to exist somewhere.Monet stood at the entrance for a long moment.Her bag hung loosely from her shoulder. Her phone sat untouched in her hand. She had not called Richard.Not yet. This—this was the part she had chosen to walk alone.“You’re here.”The voice came from behind her. Monet turned.Elara. Of course.For a moment, neither of them moved. The air shifted thicker now, charged with something that had been building long before either of them had words for it.“You knew,” Monet said quietly.Elara’s mouth curved not quite a smile. “I

Stephanie Jacobs had always been taught that choices were rarely singular.They came layered. Consequential. Tied to expectations that existed long before she was born.A Jacobs woman did not simply choose.She upheld. She persevered.She survived within parameters drawn so finely they felt like silk—until they tightened.She had been beautiful.That was the first thing people noticed.Not her intelligence, though it was there. Not her quiet defiance, though it lived beneath her skin like a second pulse.Beauty came first.It opened doors. It forgave silence. It disguised fracture.New Orleans had loved her the way it loved things it did not quite understand.Admired her. Displayed her.Adjusted itself just enough to accommodate her existence without ever truly making space for it.Stephanie learned early how to exist in that space.Half claimed. Half withheld. Entirely watched.Then she met him. Monet’s father.He did not look at her like she was something to be assessed. He looked a

Richard noticed before he understood. It wasn’t anything obvious.Monet moved through the house the same way she always did—softly, attentively, present in all the places that mattered. She laughed with the children. Listened without distraction. Touched him in passing with the same unconscious familiarity that had, over time, become his anchor.Nothing had changed.And yet—something had.It lived in the spaces between things. In the way she lingered just a second longer before answering certain questions.In the way her eyes seemed… occupied, even when her attention was fully his.In the quiet, deliberate calm that had replaced the earlier fragility, he had grown used to navigating around.Monet was not unsettled, she had decided.And that, more than anything, put him on edge. He found her in the barely used dining room that evening.The light had shifted into that soft, amber hour where the house felt suspended between day and night. Monet stood by the bay windows, her refle

“No. I will not live under the same roof as Evangeline’s killer.”The words cracked through the office like a whip.Across from her, Declan barely looked up from the documents spread across his desk. One hand rested lazily against the leather arm of his chair while the other turned a page with infuriating calm.“Then you can pack your bags and leave.”Quiet. So unbearably quiet. Patricia Walsh stared at him, momentarily robbed of speech. In the thirty-plus years she had worked for the Whitmore Family, she had seen Declan furious, grieving, reckless, and cold but this version of him unsettled her most.This version never raised his voice.“I’m sure,” he continued smoothly, “you’ll either find employment elsewhere or retire comfortably on what you’ve earned here.”Her mouth opened and closed once. “Declan—”He finally lifted his gaze. Dark eyes. Empty eyes. Patient's eyes. The kind that could outwait a storm. Hadn’t he waited twelve whole years for Leilani Vaughn? Hadn't guilt g

A noise startled Leilani awake. The wall clock on the dresser indicated that it was a few minutes past ten in the morning. How had she slept till this time? She had never been one to sleep past four am in her entire life. Maybe the illusion of freedom was getting to her. Or is it the quaint atmosphere? The sound of nature? The bed? Or the amount of food Morgana had almost force-fed into her system last night. But it was the best sleep she'd ever had. “Ye're still sleeping, lass?” Morgana asked loudly from the other side of the closed door. “I can't reheat the food again?” Leilani paused looking all over the room. It was on the upper floor, a simple, neutral room with a comfortable queen-sized bed, plush bedding, a thick vintage oak dresser, and a matching table and chair set. The best accessory had to be the huge bay windows overlooking the garden—Morgana's selling point. Leilani stretched. The threadbare T-shirt she'd worn to bed had ridden up her

Leilani sat stiffly, her spine ramrod straight in the French Bergere chair, her eyes darting almost nervously around the warm interior of the cul-de-sac inn. She had expected a seedy motel, one with a painful neon sign, a broken shower, and a door that you might have to brace with a chair to feel safe, perhaps maybe or two, one a few miles from the penitentiary where the warden had taken inm........ But this, the Thistle Inn was the direct opposite. It was a restored Victorian painted a cool shade of Robin blue with egg white shutters, wraparound porch and huge bay windows overlooking a lovely garden filled with all kinds of flowers she couldn't name if a gun was pointed at her head. It was beautiful. Maybe too beautiful. “.... I'll be checking in on you morning and evening till you make your decision.” Lennon was saying as he handed her the room key. Leilani paused her thinking, her eyes fixed on the key but she didn't take it. She would have preferred

Declan sat through the meeting in silence. Board members and stakeholders argued back and forth, voices rising and falling, but he remained unmoved. Every now and then, he sensed eyes drifting toward him. Measuring, gauging, waiting for a reaction. None came. Somehow, he was still in the restaurant. Still watching the killer. All he could do then—and now—was grit his teeth in slow, grinding agony. Waiting. Waiting until he had her in his clutches. “Declan, are you following?” The voice cut through his thoughts. He snapped out of his musings, lifting his gaze to find ten pairs of eyes fixed on him. Watching. Expectant. “I didn’t have to be here for this meeting, did I?” The domineering CEO mask slid back into place with cool, effortless ease. A few mouths opened, prepared to refute him but the calm, impassive look on his face shut them down before a single sound could escape. “All of this,” he said mildly, deceptively so, “could have been a well-documented copy

“I’m sorry, sir, but the acquisitions meeting scheduled for three-thirty is starting soon. We need to leave now if we want to make it.”Declan kept his gaze fixed on the murderer. Only part of her face was visible, and he wanted—no, needed—to see what twelve years of punishment had done to those once delicate features.It almost disappointed him.Aside from still being built like a fragile swan, her face had softened. As if prison had gentled her instead of breaking her.Declan Patridge had waited twelve years for news of her death. And three days since learning of her release to finally have her within reach. He was not about to let this moment slip.“Reschedule it,” he said calmly. “I need to make sure Lennon Jr. doesn’t screw this up.”His eyes never left the sliver of her face he could see. He felt Lennon’s gaze flick toward him more than once, but Declan didn’t look away.“We’ve already postponed twice,” Andrew replied quietly. “The shareholders won’t take kindly to another delay

Lennon didn’t flinch when her voice rose. He didn’t look around to see who was staring, didn’t raise his hands in defense, didn’t tell her to calm down. He just sat there—jaw tight, eyes steady behind his glasses—as if he’d been waiting twelve years for this moment. “Leilani,” he said, low, firm, not unkind. But she was already somewhere else, somewhere twelve years away. “You don’t get to say my name,” she hissed. The tablecloth trembled beneath her palms. The white plastic bag rustled against her hip, pointe shoes digging into her side like teeth. “I…” Her breath snagged, anger snagging with it. “I carried that baby for nine months. I begged him—your father—to help me. I told him I didn’t push her. I didn’t—she slipped. She hit her head. They knew she hit her head on the damn dresser. But he said accidental death wasn’t sympathetic enough for the jury.” Her voice cracked. “And you want me to believe you’re different?” Lennon inhaled sharply, the kind of breath someone takes