Novels by Ifeoluwa Adeyeye

The rain didn’t stop. It beat down in sheets, turning the alleys into rivers and the night into a blur of silver knives.Lucien shoved open a rusted door behind an abandoned bakery. The hinges screamed, but the street noise drowned it out. He pulled Catalina in by the arm, Isa close behind, Gabriel still clinging to her chest like a second heartbeat.Inside was dark, the air thick with mold and flour long turned sour.Lucien slammed the door shut. He leaned against it for a second, chest heaving, hair plastered to his forehead. Water dripped from his jaw onto the cracked tiles.“Safe,” Isa muttered, pulling down a curtain over the tiny window. “For now.”Catalina stood in the middle of the room, shaking. Gabriel’s small body was warm against her, but her blood felt like ice.She didn’t look at Lucien. Not once.---Minutes passed. Only the sound of the rain.Then Isa spoke, low and urgent. “We can’t stay long. If Diego marked this place, they’ll flush us out within the hour.”Lucien d

The lights cut out like someone had ripped the city from its sockets.Darkness swallowed the cell, thick and choking. Only the thrum of generators and the stutter of boots echoed in the black.Catalina clutched Gabriel tighter. His small hands dug into her nightgown. Isa’s voice hissed somewhere near the wall—sharp, panicked, “Stay down, Cat. Don’t move.”Lucien’s growl tore through the dark. “Diego!”The crack of rifles split the air, muzzle flashes carving lightning into the room. Sparks rained. Screams followed. Men dropped like stones.Catalina pressed Gabriel to her chest, trembling, the heat of gunpowder scraping her lungs. She could feel Lucien moving—an animal unleashed—every gunshot punctuated by his roars.Diego laughed. In the chaos, his voice was steady and smooth. “You can kill my dogs, Lucien, but you can’t kill the truth.”“Show your face!” Lucien bellowed.A blade clanged against concrete. Isa cursed—she had thrown it blind. Someone screamed. Then silence, broken only

The rain in Bogotá didn’t fall—it slashed. Hard, slanting cuts that turned the streets into mirrors and the alleys into rivers. Catalina stood under a crumbling archway, soaked through despite the shawl Isa had forced over her shoulders. The city smelled of diesel, wet brick, and something rotten underneath, like the past was always leaking through the stones.Isa tugged her arm. “You don’t even blink anymore, Cat. You’re scaring me.”“I can’t blink,” Catalina whispered. “If I blink, I’ll see him. Gabriel. Alone, scared, waiting.”Lucien’s shadow filled the archway. His suit jacket was gone, shirt open at the throat, his hair plastered to his skull by the rain. He looked less like a prince tonight, more like a wolf beaten but not broken.“Stay close,” he said. His voice was hoarse, ruined by shouting at men who’d failed him. “No one strays.”---The convoy moved like a beast through the city—black SUVs, engines too loud, lights dimmed. Catalina sat wedged between Isa and Lucien, h

The storm broke before dawn, lashing hard against the Torres estate as if it too were searching, demanding, hungry for answers.Catalina stood on the balcony, silent, unmoving, her eyes tracing every lightning crack across the Caribbean skyline. Somewhere out there, Gabriel was lost. Her pulse thrummed with the kind of dread that felt carved into bone.Inside, the mansion had gone silent after hours of chaos. But down below, in a chamber where Lucien kept encrypted surveillance feeds and Isa worked like a ghost in the glow of a dozen monitors.“I found something,” Isa whispered from across the dim-lit chamber, her voice not loud but sharp enough to pierce the haze. Catalina stepped in, her robe trailing, soaked from rain she hadn’t even realized she walked through. Her face was pale, lips dry, but her spine was stiff. Ready.Isa spun her screen. The image was grainy. It was a camera feed, timestamped six years ago. A hallway. A room door labeled with a red cross. Inside, Miguel

The sun dipped low over Cartagena, painting everything in sharpened gold and shadow. The Torrez mansion—its verandas draped in jasmine and fountains languid with koi—shuddered under quiet urgency.A woman stumbled down the marble entryway, breath ragged, fingers trembling. Inés Arámbula—or what remained of her former composure—was crying. Face red. Lip trembling. Hands twisted in her gown. Catalina reached her first, pulling Inés upright, hands firm on shoulders until the woman blinked and drew in her breath.They went back into the great hall together, mother-of-pearl lights flickering overhead. Catalina thought of all the moments she'd lured Inés with false warmth, all the political lies disguised as diplomacy, but this was different.This terror had a name.“Where is he?” she asked softly, voice steady. Inés shook her head. “They took him… they took him. He vanished while I watched.” Catalina’s pulse pounded. Gabriel.She wrapped Inés’s shaking hands around hers. “Take me—show me.

The morning broke slow and heavy, weighed down by thick clouds and a hush over the Torres estate that felt unnatural. Catalina sat on the edge of her bed, hand pressed lightly against her stomach as dull aches whispered warnings. Her body was shifting, sending messages she wasn’t ready to interpret yet. Her mind, however, was somewhere else—looping through blurred images of Gabriel’s last smile, the strange hollowness of the house, and the silence of the woman who had once been her silent helper. A knock came at the main entrance just after breakfast. It was sharp but not aggressive, and the guards hesitated before opening. Sister Camilla entered wrapped in her dark veil, hands folded neatly before her, rosary beads clicking with every step. She looked like a vision pulled straight from a darker century. Lucien met her at the bottom of the staircase. “Sister,” he said, his tone cautious but polite. “You weren’t expected.” “I wasn’t invited either,” she replied. “But I had a dr