Chapter: Chapter 62 — You Don't Decide ThatChapter 62 — You Don't Decide ThatDominic POVI saw Ryan ask her to leave.Not because I was standing beside them, but because I had been watching the corridor from across the room for the better part of ten minutes. The engagement party had been running smoothly on the surface. Guests were drinking, laughing, taking photographs, congratulating the happy couple. Everything looked exactly the way an engagement party was supposed to look. But appearances had become increasingly unreliable around this family, and I had long ago learned that what happened at the edges of a room usually mattered more than what happened in the center of it.I saw Ryan pull Zara aside. I saw Keisha follow shortly afterward. I saw the tension before I heard a single word. Then I saw Zara pick up her bag.That was what made me move.Not because she looked upset. She didn't. If anything, she looked irritatingly composed. Zara had a habit of accepting things she shouldn't accept, not because she lacked a backbo
Last Updated: 2026-06-07
Chapter: Chapter 61 — The PartyChapter 61 — The PartyZara POVThe engagement party was exactly what it was supposed to be.Beautiful, expensive, carefully arranged to tell a very specific story.Flowers framed the entrance in soft colors. String lights hung from the ceiling, casting a warm glow across the venue. Every table had been positioned to encourage conversation, every decorative detail chosen to create the impression of happiness, stability, and celebration. It was the kind of event that looked effortless to guests because dozens of people had spent weeks making sure it would.I knew because I was one of those people.The styling adjustments Keisha requested at the last minute had given me a legitimate reason to be there. Officially, I was working. Unofficially, it gave me access to every corner of the room, every conversation, every expression people thought nobody was noticing.I arrived early and spent the first hour making final adjustments alongside the venue team. By the time guests started arriving,
Last Updated: 2026-06-05
Chapter: Chapter 60: The Engagement party eve Chapter 60 — The Engagement Party Eve(Dominic POV)The evening before the engagement party settles into something unexpectedly quiet.Not empty, not strained—just steady in a way that has become familiar without either of us deliberately naming it. Zara is already in the kitchen when I come in, moving through the space with an ease that still feels new in a place like this. There is nothing performative about it. No attempt to turn the moment into something softer or more significant than it is. She is simply there, finishing dinner, as though this has always been part of her life.I take my jacket off and set it aside, watching her for a moment longer than necessary. She notices, of course.“You’re staring,” she says without looking up.“I’m observing,” I reply.“That’s worse.”There is no argument in it, just a quiet exchange that settles easily between us. We eat without interruption, no calls brea
Last Updated: 2026-06-01
Chapter: Chapter 59: Three days before Chapter 59 — Three Days Before(Zara POV)Three days before the engagement party, I have two photographs.The first one—the gala—is already familiar. I’ve looked at it enough times now that I don’t need to open it to remember the angle, the distance, the intention behind it. The second one arrives the next evening, from the same unknown number.This one is different.It’s taken outside the penthouse building.Not inside, not close enough to suggest access—but close enough to confirm something else entirely. The frame catches me stepping out of the car, Dominic just behind me, his hand briefly at my back again. The lighting is lower, evening shadows stretching across the pavement, but the quality is just as clean.Same eye.Same purpose.I don’t react when I see it.I save it.Then I document it properly—timestamp, source, sequence. I add it to the first one, building a file that is no
Last Updated: 2026-05-31
Chapter: Chapter 58; The Photograph Chapter 58 — The Photograph(Dominic POV)Zara sends the photograph without commentary.No message layered with reaction. No attempt to frame what I should see when I open it. Just the image itself, followed by a second message a minute later.Sent it to Marcus too.I look at it for longer than I should need.Not because I don’t understand what it is, but because I want to understand how it was taken. Angle, distance, timing. The moment itself is clear—I remember it without effort. Leaving the gala, the room still loud behind us, her attention half on the exit, half on the event she had just finished managing. My hand at her back, not for display, not for effect. Just there.But the photograph turns it into something else.Something composed.Someone was waiting for that moment.I don’t call her first.I call Marcus.He answers immediately.“I have it,” he says before
Last Updated: 2026-05-31
Chapter: Chapter 57: Eight daysChapter 57 — Eight Days(Zara POV)After my mother leaves the penthouse, I don’t stay.Not because I’m upset in a loud way, or because I can’t sit in that space anymore. It’s something quieter than that. I just know I need distance to think, and Dominic doesn’t try to stop me when I say I’m going to Jane’s. He looks like he wants to ask me to stay, but he doesn’t. He understands when something needs space.Jane opens the door before I knock properly, like she already knew I was coming.“You look like you’ve been thinking too much,” she says, stepping aside to let me in.“I have,” I reply, dropping my bag by the couch.We settle into the living room the way we always do, familiar without effort. I tell her everything. Not in one rush, but in pieces—the knock, my mother standing there, the way she walked in like she had a right to be in that space. What she said. What she didn’t say.Jane listens the way she always does. No interruptions, no rushing me through it.When I finish, she lea
Last Updated: 2026-05-30
WHERE SIN FEELS LIKE HOME
His hands were everywhere, and I let them be.
“You know this is wrong,” he murmured against my throat.
“I know.” I tilted my head back anyway.
He pulled back, eyes dark. “Tell me to stop, Zella.”
I looked at the silver in his hair, the jaw that could cut glass, my best friend’s father, twenty years too old and a thousand reasons too dangerous.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered.
Seven days before my Christmas wedding, I caught my fiancé with my cousin. By morning I had lost everything, my relationship, my job, my future. I walked into the London rain with nothing left.
A stranger stopped his car. Offered an umbrella. Gave me a drink instead of the mistake I begged for. Then disappeared before dawn.
I never expected to find him again in a darkened hotel room on New Year’s Eve… or to give him the one thing I’d never given anyone.
The next morning, when my best friend introduced me to her father, Evander Ashford looked me in the eye and said, “Nice to meet you,” as if he hadn’t already ruined me the night before.
He is forbidden.
He is twice my age.
He is the one man I was never supposed to want.
But he is the first person who ever made me feel worth keeping, and the only place this broken heart has ever felt safe.
Where Sin Feels Like Home — because sometimes the wrongest man is the only home you’ve ever known.
Read
Chapter: Chapter 41Chapter 41: Waiting in the Dark~zella pov ~"What?" Callum leaned closer, the noise of the restaurant swallowing half the words. "What did you say?"I looked at him across the candlelit table and made a choice."I remember now," I said smoothly. "I placed an order for some clothes a week ago and they told me what I wanted had finished and they'd send something else instead. I didn't check the new clothes when they arrived and my mind wasn't there either."The lie came out perfectly. No hesitation. No crack in the voice. Just a practical explanation for an expensive dress that had appeared on my doorstep like a summons. I delivered it the way I'd learned to deliver things confidently, without apology, with the specific ease of someone who had practiced lying to people she cared about.Callum nodded, accepted it without question, moved on to his soup with the easy trust of a man who had no reason to disbelieve me.I sat a
Last Updated: 2026-06-08
Chapter: Chapter 40Chapter 40: The Dress~Zella Pov ~I opened the bag inside the flat.Tissue paper first, layers of it, expensive and careful, the kind of wrapping that cost money. Beneath it, the dress.Pink. Not quite pink, somewhere between pink and blue, that specific luxury colour that didn't have a proper name, just existed as an aesthetic choice. It was small. Short. The kind of dress that looked like nothing on a hanger and everything on a body. I pulled it out and held it up to the light coming through the window.It was screaming expensive.Beside it, a shoe box. Heels. Delicate, strappy, the kind of thing you wore when you wanted someone to notice your legs. A bag, small and structured, in the same impossible pink-blue. And jewellery, a thin gold bracelet, earrings that caught the light like water.Everything coordinated. Everything chosen with the specific precision of someone who understood aesthetics.This was Callum saying *I want you to be beautiful tonight*. This was Callum saying *I
Last Updated: 2026-06-08
Chapter: Chapter 39Chapter 39: Waiting~ Zella Pov ~I went back to my desk.Not immediately. I stood in the hallway for approximately forty-five seconds, letting my breathing return to something resembling normal, letting my body stop doing the things it had been doing, letting my mind catch up to the fact that I had just been told I belonged to someone and had found the thought entirely too appealing.Then I straightened my dress. Checked my reflection in the glass of a dark window. Looked vaguely professional. Opened the office door and walked back in like I'd been checking emails instead of having my entire internal structure reorganized by a man who hadn't even needed to touch me to do it.Sienna was waiting with the file still under her arm, her expression perfectly neutral, the specific professionalism of someone who had worked in this environment long enough to hear nothing and see nothing and certainly not notice that my blouse was half-buttoned or that I was moving like someone who had just be
Last Updated: 2026-06-07
Chapter: Chapter 38 Chapter 38: Belong~Zella Pov~I couldn't answer him.Not because I didn't know the truth. Because the truth was carved into my body from New Year's Eve, branded into my skin across a month in Paris, written into every breath I took around him.Yes. Always yes.His forehead was still against mine. His hand was still on my face, and I felt it, that familiar pull that had started in the London rain and hadn't stopped since, wouldn't stop, had become as essential to my body as blood."Zella," he said, his voice low. Patient. The voice of a man who already knew the answer and was simply waiting for me to admit what we both knew was true."We can't," I whispered. But my hands were already moving to his shirt, the same shirt I'd memorized in the dark of a penthouse, the same fabric I'd gripped in Paris while my body did things my mind couldn't process. "We said...""Say it again.""We can't." My fingers found buttons. "Sienna. The building. This is work and Brynn is...""Say it like you me
Last Updated: 2026-06-05
Chapter: Chapter 37CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN : Tomatoes~Zella's POV~Turns out being Evander's estate manager meant seeing Evander constantly.I had not fully thought this through.Every file needed his sign-off. Every decision above a certain threshold went through him. Every contractor query that Sienna hadn't covered in the handover and there were several required a conversation with the man himself. By noon on my first day I had been in and out of his office three times and my face had been doing the tomato thing for approximately four hours straight.Sienna noticed on the fourth trip.She fell into step beside me in the corridor, file under her arm, reading something on her phone, and without looking up said... "Are you okay?""Fine." I kept walking."You go red every time you're about to go in there." She glanced at me sideways. "Cheeks, neck, the whole thing.""It's warm in this building.""It's January in Scotland.""I run hot."She stopped walking. I stopped too."Don't be scared of him," she sa
Last Updated: 2026-06-04
Chapter: Chapter 36CHAPTER THIRTY SIX : Can I Really Do This~Zella's POV~"Sit down," he said.I sat. The room was quiet now, just the two of us and the morning light coming through the tall windows and whatever he had decided to say before things became officially professional.He didn't sit. He stood at the window the way he stood at windows, hands in his pockets, looking at something outside briefly before he turned back."I want you to feel free to ask me anything," he said. "About the role, the estate, the staff, the contractors, anything that will make the transition easier. Don't second-guess whether a question is too small. Ask.""Okay.""Sienna will cover the operational handover this week. But if something doesn't make sense or she's already left before you've understood it fully, come to me directly.""I will."He nodded. "You're going to be good at this."I looked at my hands briefly. "Thank you."He was quiet for a moment. Then ... "Did Brynn believe you?"I looked up. "About the dinner?"
Last Updated: 2026-06-03
LOGIN
