Novels by Ka'Fav

The gate buzzer sounded just after ten, sharp and unexpected. Zaria was still in the morning room, nursing a cup of tea that had gone cold, when the housekeeper appeared in the doorway with a polite, hesitant expression.“Ma’am, your brother Rowan is at the gate. He says he’s come to visit you.”Zaria’s fingers tightened around the cup. She hadn’t invited him. No one had. Rowan showing up unannounced at the Voss estate meant one thing: he wanted to see, to measure, to carry every detail back to their father and Mirelle. And she couldn’t turn him away without creating the exact kind of scene that would make her look unstable, ungrateful, or worse hiding something.She set the cup down carefully. “Let him in.”─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──Rowan strolled through the front doors like he belonged there, hands in his pockets, a lazy smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. He was dressed too casually for a formal call: jeans, expensive sneakers, a shirt that probably cost more than most people’s rent.

The clink of silver against porcelain should have been harmless. Instead, it rang like a warning.Zaria sat at the long breakfast table with her hands folded in her lap, spine straight, expression neutral. Across from her, the mother-in-law—Ethan’s mother—lifted her teacup and let her gaze settle on Zaria with the precision of someone choosing exactly where to cut.“Still no good news on the family front, I suppose?” The words landed softly, almost kindly, but the room heard the blade underneath. “Time does have a way of running out for these things. Especially when one party seems… reluctant.”Heat crawled up Zaria’s neck. She felt the eyes: Vivienne’s polite curiosity, Camille’s quiet satisfaction, and even Ethan’s sudden discomfort. Six weeks. The number pulsed behind her ribs like a second heartbeat. She opened her mouth to answer, something measured, something safe—“Some matters are better left to those directly involved.” Caelum’s voice cut in, low and even, from the head of th

She took the stairs at a normal pace.Not slow; slow would have looked like someone preparing themselves. Not fast either because it would have looked like someone who had something to settle before they got there. She took them the way she took everything in this house that required her to perform composure she did not entirely feel: evenly, with her shoulders back and her face already arranged into the expression that gave nothing away.The sitting room was already occupied.Ethan was on the sofa, jacket off, relaxed in that particular way; he was only relaxed when Camille was in the room. Vivienne is in her usual chair, hands around a cup. Camille was beside Ethan, not touching him, not close enough to be obvious, just close enough that the arrangement of the room communicated something without saying it.The conversation was already in progress when Zaria walked in."...the weekend logistics," Vivienne was saying. "If we want the east wing ready for the cousins, we need to confirm

The woman was already waiting when Zaria pulled up.She was standing outside a small café forty minutes from the Voss estate, elderly, small, with the particular stillness of someone who had been deciding whether to run for the past twenty years and had finally chosen to stay. She had a canvas bag held against her chest with both hands; the way you hold something when letting go of it is the most frightening part of why you came.Zaria got out of the car."Mrs. Amanda?" She had gotten the name on the phone just before the call ended.The woman nodded. She looked at Zaria's face for a long moment with an expression that was doing several things at once: recognition, grief, and something close to relief that had clearly been waiting a very long time for somewhere to land."You look like her," she said. "Around the eyes."Zaria's chest did something she kept off her face. "Can we sit?"─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──They took a corner table. The café was nearly empty. The woman ordered nothing. She kept t

The message had come through Rowan, which told her everything about how her father felt before she had even read it.*Dad wants you home for dinner Friday. Bring your husband if you can.*That last part, *if you can*, was Rowan's addition. The small insertion of doubt, placed there to remind her that her inability to produce her husband on request was already being noted and enjoyed.She had asked Ethan anyway."Friday?" He had looked at his phone, then at her, then at some point above her left shoulder. "I have something.""It's my father's dinner.""I know, I just—" He was already moving away, already half out of the conversation. "Send my apologies." I'll come next time."There would not be a next time. They both knew that. She had let him go without pushing because pushing Ethan was like pushing water; it moved around you and reformed exactly where it had been.She arrived at her father's house alone.─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──Desmond Ellison's expression when he opened the door did something

She had not been able to sleep.That was the honest reason she was in the library at half past eleven, not because she needed a book, not because the library had anything she couldn't find upstairs. She had needed somewhere that wasn't her bedroom, somewhere the silence felt chosen rather than assigned to her, and the library was the one room in this house that had never felt hostile.She had been there forty minutes, curled into the corner of the large chair near the window, when the door opened.She knew who it was before she looked up.She looked up anyway.─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──Caelum stopped for exactly one second when he saw her. Then he came in.He did not apologize for interrupting. Did not offer to leave, did not ask if she minded. He crossed to the drinks cabinet with the unhurried certainty of a man who had decided something before he entered the room, poured two fingers of something dark, and sat in the chair across from her.Not close. The low table between them. But close enough