Novels by Reenywrites

Her plan was crazy, but it was also the only one she had. Love and desperation will do that to you. To make it work, I had to disappear. Alessia Costa had to go away, and Kia Benett had to show up. I had to learn how to move like a guy, stand like a guy, and talk like a guy. I had to wrap my chest so flat that no one would notice anything weird. And it had to be perfect, because messing up would not just cost me the job. It would cost me my mom.I stood in front of the old mirror in my room. The girl looking back at me had dark circles under her eyes and looked like she had not slept in a week. My hands went up like someone else was controlling them. I touched my jaw, my cheek, my shoulder. Then I touched my hip, the part of me that would be hardest to hide. This was who I was. This was the body I was about to say goodbye to.And then I felt something settle in my stomach, heavy and cold. Great.To save my mother, I had to kill the girl in the mirror. No pressure.My hands did not sha

The steel door clanged shut behind me, and that sound told me my old life was over. I pressed my palm flat against the cold concrete wall and let it bite into my skin. The world became a small box now, a bed and a metal toilet, and because I had nowhere else to go, this became my home. The first night I did not sleep. I sat on the thin mattress with my back against the cold wall, and everything I had lost felt like a weight on my chest. I could not breathe right.Chloe came to visit me, her face pale behind the scratched glass window. She picked up the phone and said, "You won't be here long, Alessia. I promise you." Her voice sounded small and far away through the speaker. I noticed she did not look me in the eye when she said it. She looked just past me, at the wall behind my head. I wanted to believe her anyway because she was the only hope I had left. But even then, some part of me filed that away.The first week was hard because I kept thinking about my baby. I would sit at meal

I barely slept after what happened in the hallway. Jessica's warning echoed in my head all night, that smile she gave me when she said I saw everything. She wasn't just jealous—she was threatened. And people like Jessica didn't get threatened quietly. They struck back when you least expected it. But I didn't have time to figure her out, because the next morning I was in the interrogation room at the exact time they gave me, my heart already knocking against my ribs before I even sat down. The walls were light green and the table was scratched and bolted to the floor, one wall all mirror, and the air was cold and smelled like old coffee and cleaner, sharp in my nose. I sat down and noticed the small cameras perched in the corners, their red lights blinking steady. I knew people were watching from the other side of that mirror, could almost feel their eyes on the back of my neck. ADA Miles Henderson sat across from me. Late forties, lean face, blank expression. Expensive plain suit

The text message stayed on my mind the whole two weeks I was healing. You should have died last night. I read it so many times the words started to blur. It was just a phone with a message from a number that didn’t exist when I tried to call it back. Who could be that person? *** Two weeks later, I walked back into the place that might have killed me, the air thick with perfume and cigarette smoke, the bass from the club already vibrating through the floor and up into my legs, making my skin prickle with the memory of everything I had lost. I pulled my uniform tight and kept my head down, trying to disappear into the noise. Madam Jessica caught me before I even reached the locker room. She stepped into my path, looked me up and down once—her eyes slow, deliberate, taking in every inch, the way you look at something you’re trying to figure out—and turned toward her office without saying a word. I followed her in, my pulse already starting to pick up. She didn’t sit. She stood

“Go deliver your order. Come to my office when you’re done.” She was already walking away when she said it, her heels hitting the floor in a steady rhythm that faded down the corridor, and she didn’t look back. I stood there with the tray in my hands, the weight of the glasses pressing into my palms, and watched her go. Then I looked down at the tray, looked back up at the corridor, and started walking. The VIP rooms were always at the end of the east hall. I had walked this stretch a hundred times and knew every door—which ones creaked and which ones you had to pull toward you before you pushed or they caught on the frame. But tonight I stopped in front of the door without planning to, just stood there for a second with the tray balanced on my fingers and the ring sitting against my chest under my shirt, the metal warm from my skin. Something felt wrong but I had nothing to point to, so I told myself to stop overthinking and pushed the door open with my shoulder. The room was quiet

ALESSIAThe room was dark.Not pitch black — there was light coming from somewhere down the hall, thin and gold, just enough that I could see shapes and edges and the outline of him standing there looking at me. My heart was going faster than it had any right to. My hands weren't steady. I had them at my sides and I could feel them not being steady and I couldn't do anything about it.I had never done this before.Not the wanting part — I had felt that before, that quiet pull toward someone, and I had always been able to walk away from it without much effort. But this was different. This was being in the room. Being looked at like that, like I was something that mattered, by someone who hadn't asked me a single question about my life and somehow that made it easier to stand there instead of harder.I didn't know his name.I didn't know what any of this was.I just knew that when he reached out and turned me to face him, something in my chest just — said yes. Before I had made any deci