Novels by Riyah~

Adelaide's POV:I woke up slowly, the kind of gentle waking where the world feels soft around the edges. Sunlight filtered through the thin curtains of the apartment bedroom, painting warm stripes across the plain white duvet. For a moment I just lay there, breathing in the unfamiliar but comforting scent of fresh paint and Jax’s cologne on the pillow beside me.This is real. Our new apartment was small — nothing like the sprawling Langford estate or the grand Hale mansion — but it felt like home in a way those places never had. Two bedrooms, one master with the bed we were currently tangled in, a modest living room with a second-hand couch Jax had already promised we’d upgrade soon, and a tiny kitchen that smelled like coffee and toast. One of the spare rooms would be for the baby. The other could be for a visitor, or maybe a little office for me if I ever went back to freelance design. It was modest, but

Adelaide's POV:I stepped into the quiet café Andrea had chosen, the bell above the door jingling softly. The place was almost empty — just a few scattered patrons nursing late-morning coffees. My eyes scanned the room until they landed on her at a corner table by the window.I froze.Andrea looked… broken. Her face was pale, almost ghostly under the soft lighting, and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, like she had been crying for hours. The perfect, composed twin I had always known was nowhere to be seen. This version of her looked fragile, like one wrong word could make her shatter.My heart clenched. I rushed over without thinking and pulled her into a quick, tight hug. She stiffened for half a second, then melted into it, her arms wrapping around me like she needed the contact as much as I did.“Addie,” she whispered, voice thick. She pulled back first, forcing a small, shaky smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Sit down. Please.”I slid into the chair across from her, my own

Andrea's PoV:I stood at the marble island in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for the stir-fry I was making with the head nanny, Maria.The knife moved in steady, rhythmic motions against the cutting board, the scent of garlic and fresh ginger filling the air. It was a simple, domestic task, something I had come to enjoy in the short time I had been Mrs. Langford. Cooking with Maria felt grounding, a small pocket of normalcy in a life that had become anything but.My phone rang on the counter. Mom’s name flashed across the screen. I wiped my hands on a dish towel and answered, putting it on speaker so I could keep working.“Mom,” I said, trying to sound light. “Hi. Everything okay?”Her voice came through sharp and clipped, laced with the kind of disappointment I had heard a thousand times growing up. “Andrea, have you heard what your sister has done?...”I paused mid-chop, The knife hovering above the carrots.“No, what happened?”She exhaled dramatically, faking a crying tone, tha

Adelaide's POV:The drive to the Hale estate felt longer than it should have. Jax’s truck hummed steadily beneath us, the morning sun casting long shadows across the road. I sat in the passenger seat with my hands folded tightly in my lap, the simple gold band on my finger still feeling foreign and new. We had left the registry office as husband and wife less than 6 hours ago, yet the weight of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours pressed down on me like a physical thing.The Hale estate came into view around the bend, the tall iron gates standing open as if nothing in the world had changed. But the house itself looked quiet — unnaturally so. The gardens were perfectly manicured, the fountain still trickling, the windows reflecting the early sunlight like mirrors. It felt like a cemetery: beautiful on the surface, but empty and cold underneath. I swallowed hard.“You can wait in the car,” I said softly, turning to Jax. “I’ll run in, grab my things, and be rig

Jax's PoV:I woke up at exactly 3 a.m., the same way I had every morning for the last ten years, sharp, alert, mind already running through the next move before my eyes even opened. The room was dark except for the faint blue glow of the nightlight I’d never bothered to remove from my childhood wall. Adelaide was still asleep beside me, curled on her side, one hand resting protectively over her belly even in her dreams. Her breathing was slow and even, peaceful in a way I hadn’t seen since the night I proposed to her on that rooftop.I watched her for a long moment. The woman I was supposed to destroy looked so fragile like this — raven hair spilling across the pillow, lips slightly parted, the faint curve of her stomach already hinting at the life growing inside her. My child. Hale blood mixed with Smith blood. The plan had never accounted for this variable.I slipped out of bed carefully, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a plain T-shirt. The floorboards creaked softly under m

Adelaide's POV:We stepped into the small marriage registry office hand in hand, and for the first time in what felt like forever, the world didn’t feel like it was closing in on me.The place was modest — nothing like the grand cathedral I had just fled. Plain wooden benches, a simple desk with a bored-looking clerk who straightened up the moment we walked in, and soft afternoon light filtering through the windows. It smelled like old paper and fresh coffee. Ordinary. Peaceful. The complete opposite of the circus I had left behind.Jax’s parents were already waiting inside. His mom stood up first, her face lighting up with a warmth that made my chest ache. She crossed the room in two quick steps and pulled me into a tight hug, the kind that felt like coming home after a long war.“Adélaïde,” she whispered against my hair, voice thick with emotion. “Everything will finally be alright, sweetheart. You’re safe now. You’re with us.”His Dad also wheeled closer, his eyes soft but steady.

Aria's POV The aquarium smelled of salt water and the particular contained wildness of living things kept in glass, and Zane walked into it like someone arriving somewhere they had been heading for a long time without knowing it.He stopped just inside the entrance.Looked up.Above us the ceiling curved into a vast dome of pale blue glass through which the morning light came diffused and watery, the whole entrance hall lit with the quality of being underwater without being underwater, and Zane stood in the middle of it with his head tipped back and his mouth slightly open and his whole face doing the thing it did when something genuinely surprised him, the full unguarded wonder of a child encountering the world at its most extraordinary.Marcus and I stopped on either side of him.We looked at each other briefly over his head.There was no word for what passed between us in that moment. It was not a look that required one. It was simply two people on either side of a child they had

Aria's PoVEduardo Caruso's response came not as a threat.It came as a letter.Delivered to Meridian General at eight in the morning on Monday, addressed to Dr. Aria Vale in handwriting that was precise and unhurried, the handwriting of someone who had been educated expensively and a long time ago and still considered a pen the appropriate instrument for important communication. It arrived inside a cream envelope of the kind that costs more per sheet than most people's printer paper, sealed with no mark, no return address, nothing that identified its origin to anyone who did not already know.I recognised it anyway.I took it to my office and closed the door and opened it with the letter opener my mother had given me when I started at Meridian, the one with the small enamel flower on the handle that was entirely impractical and entirely beloved, and I read it standing at my desk because sitting felt like a concession I was not prepared to make.It was three paragraphs.The first ackn

Aria's PovIt happened on a Saturday.Three days after the morning in my mother's hallway, three days after anglerfish and the good jumper and Marcus sitting cross legged on Zane's bedroom floor for forty minutes while deep sea ecology was explained to him with the thoroughness of someone who considered incomplete knowledge a personal failing.Three days during which the world had rearranged itself quietly around a new shape.Marcus had come back on Friday. Not pushed, not announced, simply appeared at my mother's door at eleven in the morning with a chess set under his arm because Zane had mentioned in passing that Mr. Adeyemi was teaching him and Marcus had said I play, which was the most efficient thing he could have said and he knew it. I had watched from the kitchen doorway while they set up the board at the dining table, Zane explaining the rules with the patient authority of someone who has recently learned something and considers it their responsibility to pass it on, Marcus l

Aria's PoVZane woke at six twenty eight.I know because I was sitting on the edge of his bed watching the sky through his curtains go from deep blue to the particular pale grey of early morning and counting the minutes the way I had counted the traffic lights on the drive to St. Clement's, not deliberately, just because my mind needed something precise to hold while the rest of it was doing something it could not afford to do yet.He surfaced the way he always did, all at once, eyes open and immediately present, and found me sitting there and did not appear startled by this because I had appeared in his room in the early morning before, on the difficult nights of his first years and later when my Friday drives arrived later than expected and I could not wait until he woke naturally to see his face.He looked at me for a moment.Then he said, "You drove in the night."Not a question. An observation. He had his father's quality of stating things he was certain of rather than asking abo

Aria's POV I sat up.Not slowly, not the gradual negotiation between sleep and wakefulness that the small hours usually require. All at once, the way Marcus woke, the way I had learned to wake during my residency when the pager went off at three in the morning and you had sixty seconds to be functional. I was upright with my back against the headboard and the phone at my ear and every part of me that had ever learned to be alert in a crisis was alert now."You have the wrong number," I said."Dr. Aria Vale," the voice said. "Formerly Aria Chen. Wife, briefly, of Marcus Veil. Mother of Zane Vale, age seven, currently under the care of Dr. Mensah at St. Clement's for a condition that I understand requires a biological match for treatment." A pause, perfectly timed, the pause of someone who has rehearsed this and knows exactly where to put the silences for maximum effect. "I don't believe I have the wrong number."The room was very dark. Outside my window the city was doing its three in

AriaThe coffee was bad.Not hospital bad, which was a category of bad I had made my peace with years ago, but bad in the specific way of coffee that has been sitting too long in a machine that needed descaling three months ago and nobody had gotten around to. I drank it anyway, standing at the window of the small conference room Marcus had commandeered on the second floor, because it was hot and it was caffeine and those were the only two qualities that mattered at eleven in the evening with ten days and a Caruso problem ahead of us.Marcus was at the table with his laptop open and his phone beside it and the particular focused stillness of a man who has shifted from personal to operational. I had seen him do it in the hospital room over the past two weeks, the way he could set down whatever was human and immediate and pick up whatever was strategic, the transition so clean it was almost architectural. It had unsettled me then. Now, with Zane's name written somewhere in a clause thir