Novels by EstherJames62327

Florence Abbott did not ask questions until tea had been poured.That, Richard had learned, was how she controlled the temperature of a room—through ritual, through civility, through the refusal to rush toward alarm.The drawing room was familiar in the way inherited spaces were. Not cold. Certain. Tall windows. A marble mantel. Furniture that had never needed to announce its value.Richard stood by the window, sleeves rolled past his elbows. “She spoke to me,” Florence said finally, lifting her cup. “Elara Jacobs.”Richard turned slowly. “You found her.”Florence nodded. “A museum. Predictable. Intelligent. Angry.”“That tracks,” Richard said.Florence glanced at him over the rim of her cup. “And Gabriel?”Richard exhaled once. “No longer pretending. He's hiding something big.”Florence set her cup down. “Then we are past coincidence.”“Yes.”They sat in the silence of people who understood that the word yes had weight.Florence folded her hands. “She believes she is owed restitutio

Elara had chosen the museum because it was anonymous and it was in New York. Museums were good like that—full of people, but not intimacy. Movement without engagement. You could stand in front of a centuries-old painting and feel unseen, which was exactly what she needed after the podcast, after the backlash, after the silence she had not expected to hurt this much.She was halfway through the West African sculpture wing when she felt it. Not being watched. Being recognized.“Elara Jacobs.”The voice was calm. Cultured. Female. Not young.Elara turned slowly.The woman standing behind her did not belong to the museum the way tourists did. She belonged the way benefactors did—tailored coat, posture precise, eyes observant without curiosity. Wealth without noise. Authority without announcement.Florence Abbott.Elara knew her face from photographs. Society columns. Old Christmas features that pretended not to be about lineage while being entirely about lineage.Richard’s grandmother.

Richard Abbott did not confront people on instinct.He gathered facts. He verified patterns. He waited until certainty settled into his bones like a weight inescapable, undeniable.That was how he knew Gabriel Morgan was not a coincidence.The PI’s report lay open on Richard’s desk, pages neat, impersonal, damning in their restraint. Names. Dates. Proximity. Patterns that did not scream guilt but whispered intention.Gabriel Morgan. Private equity consultant. International board appointments. Old-money access without visible origin.And threaded through it all—quietly, repeatedly—Monet.Richard leaned back, fingers steepled, jaw tight.Gabriel had been near the foundations on which Monet once stood. Near the convents. Near the social circles that brushed too close to Stephanie Jacobs’ shadow. Near Elara—long before Seychelles, long before chance could be blamed.Richard exhaled slowly. So this was not curiosity.This was an inheritance. He closed the file and stood. They met.

Juliet Pendleton saw it while standing in her kitchen, barefoot on cold marble, a porcelain cup cooling untouched in her hand.She hadn’t been looking for it. That was the unsettling part.The notification surfaced the way truths often did in her life—uninvited, perfectly timed.Trending: Stephanie Jacobs’ Daughters—A Legacy Reopened. The Jacobs family isn't offering any comments at the moment. Juliet frowned faintly and tapped the screen. She listened. All the way through.She didn’t interrupt it with outrage or disbelief. She didn’t pace. She didn’t curse Monet or Elara or Richard.She simply listened.By the time the episode ended, her tea had gone cold and something sharp and old had surfaced behind her ribs.“Well,” she murmured to the empty kitchen. “So it finally escaped the box.”Juliet had spent most of her life adjacent to secrets that other people believed were buried. Old money had a way of leaving fingerprints on stories even after it washed its hands.Stephanie Jaco

Monet knew who it was before the knock finished echoing on the door. There was a particular rhythm to Mother Margaret’s presence—unhurried, reverent, as though even doors should be approached with care. Monet closes her eyes briefly, breath tightening, then forces herself to stand. She opens the door.Mother Margaret looks smaller than Monet remembers. Or maybe Monet has grown into her grief. The nun’s habit is immaculate, her silver-streaked hair tucked neatly beneath her veil, her eyes warm with something dangerously close to relief.“Monet,” she says softly.That is all it takes.Anger surges—hot, immediate—but it has nowhere to land. It dissolves the moment Mother Margaret steps forward and cups Monet’s face the way she used to when Monet was a child with skinned knees and unasked questions.“You shouldn’t have come,” Monet says, even as she steps aside.“I know,” Mother Margaret replies, and enters anyway.They sit in the breakfast nook in the kitchen. Monet pours tea. Stea

The silence came first.Not immediately—not while the recording lights are still warm, not while the producer is thanking her, not while the sound engineer nods like he’s witnessed something important. Silence waits. It is patient. It always is.It finds her later. In the back seat of the car.In the pause before her phone lights up again.In the way her aunt’s house smells like lemon cleaner and nothing else.Elara presses her forehead against the window as the city slides past. Neon, glass, faces reflected and distorted. The world looks unchanged, which feels offensive. She has just spoken a truth that took her entire life to assemble, and the streetlights don’t even flicker in acknowledgment.Her phone buzzes. She doesn’t check it.She already knows what’s there. She had known before she agreed to the podcast before she sat in that chair, microphone hovering inches from her mouth like a question that had been waiting decades to be asked. Sympathy. Curiosity. Applause. Dis

“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

Leilani didn’t say anything the entire drive, and they'd left the prison parking lot almost three hours before their drive to the city. Lennon didn’t push. He didn’t try to fill the silence with explanations or reassurances. He drove, every so often glancing at her through the rearview mirror.Her gaze stayed fixed on the passing world, not with wonder, but with tension coiled into her shoulders. Every new sound outside the window made her eyes flick sharply: a bus hissing to a stop, a child laughing too loudly, the slam of a distant car door.Once, her hand twitched, a reflex, a flinch when a motorcycle roared past.Twelve years of surviving in a place where every sound meant something. It would take time for her mind to stop treating freedom like a threat.When he turned into the underground lot of the restaurant, she stiffened.“Where are we?” she asked, her voice low, rough, like she hadn’t used it in years.“A private place,” Lennon said. “Neutral. Safe.”Safe. He shouldn’t have

Lennon Patterson Jr. had reviewed the file three times before leaving the office. Twelve years. Manslaughter. A seventeen-year-old girl with a promising ballet future turned into a convicted killer. At least, that was the official narrative. His father had believed it. The courts had believed it. The public had eaten it alive with the headline plastered on the cover of every major newsstand. But even as a wet-behind-the-ear law student, Lennon had his doubts about the story, especially when his father—a top criminal lawyer—had taken the case pro bono and lost. His father was gone now—almost comatose in his bedroom with machines hooked on him and his very first‘ assignment’ as the new managing partner was to make sure a woman who'd served her time regret stepping out of the gates. What could possibly go wrong? He drove toward the correctional facility, his fingers tightening around the leather steering wheel, he couldn’t shake the uneasy sense that If the reports were accu

Freedom hit her like a slap. The gate groaned open behind her, rusted metal protesting the idea of letting her go. and Leilani stepped out as though the concrete beneath her feet might crumble. The sun wasn’t bright; it was shy behind thin morning clouds. But even that soft light felt violent after twelve years under flickering bulbs and concrete ceilings. Her eyes watered from the brightness. She blinked hard. And again. And again. The world wasn’t quiet. That was the first shock. After a decade of regimented noise—count time, footsteps, doors, shouts—real noise felt lawless. Untamed. Birds chattered too loudly. A car horn popped somewhere beyond the parking lot. Wind rustled through trees with a freedom she no longer trusted. Leilani clutched the white plastic bag to her chest, the pointe shoes inside digging into her ribs. She inhaled, but the air didn’t quite reach her lungs. She didn’t cry. Not because she was strong, she wasn’t sure she was, not anymore but becau

“Vaughn. Leilani Amara Vaughn.” The name echoed like it belonged to a ghost, bouncing off the concrete and metal walls that had held her for more than ten years. But the ghost stood up. Pale. Scarred. Wearing goodwill jeans two sizes too big and a sweater that swallowed her whole. The wounds ran deeper than skin buried in places the mirror no longer recognized. The property officer—a woman with beady eyes and a face carved permanently into boredom—read from Leilani’s inventory list in a flat, monotone drone. The exhaustion of the job clung to her like lint. Leilani could hardly believe it. After twelve years, the day she would see the world again had actually arrived. Another version of her might have cried. The Leilani from before would have let her eyes brim and spill over. But Leilani’s rose-colored glasses had been shattered by the American justice system. A white plastic bag was tossed onto the rickety iron table with careless disinterest. Her entire life—twelve years o