Novels by Chloe Raven

Elena"Looking for something?"I had exactly one heartbeat to decide. My mind ran through every lie I owned in that single second, discarding each one before it fully formed, because I could see in his face that he already knew most of the ones I might reach for."A dress," I said finally. "I lent Sophia one, months ago. I thought I'd take it back before I forgot which one it was."It was thin. The kind of lie that only works if the person hearing it wants to believe it, and I had no idea, standing there with my pulse hammering in my throat, whether Marcus wanted to believe anything I said anymore.He looked at me a long moment. Long enough that the silence had a weight to it, pressing down on my chest until I could barely draw a full breath."Did you find what you needed?" he asked."No. I think it's at the cleaners.""Sophia keeps her room tidy, doesn't she." His eyes moved past me, to the closet I'd just closed, to the shoes lined up almost exactly the way I'd left them, and someth

ElenaThe phone buzzed again in my hand and I nearly threw it across the room.Another message. Same blank number.*You should look closer to home. She knows more than she's telling you.*I read it twice, my pulse hammering so hard I could feel it behind my eyes, in that same place the cancer liked to sit. She. There was only one she it could mean in this house, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor, taking something with it I hadn't realized I still had left to lose. A small, stupid hope that at least Sophia's cruelty toward me had limits.I didn't sleep. I lay there running through every conversation I'd ever had with her, every cup of tea, every morning she'd asked if I was alright and I'd believed she meant it, searching for the one moment I'd missed something. By four in the morning I gave up and just lay there in the dark, listening to Marcus breathe beside me, waiting for the house to wake up around us both.He left for the airport at six. A Geneva trip, gone until

ElenaHe told him you know about the accident.I stared at that message until the bathroom tile went cold under me. My legs had gone numb and I hadn't even noticed.Not Damian. Not Sophia. Not Varner, unless he'd lied to me, and my gut said he hadn't. Someone else was in this. Someone who had reached Marcus before I'd said a single word about it out loud to a living soul.I tried the number back. It rang twice, then a flat recorded voice told me it was no longer in service.Gone. Whoever warned me had disappeared the second the warning left their hands.I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and let myself have exactly one minute of falling apart, quiet, controlled, the kind you can wash off your face in under sixty seconds. Then I stood up. There was no one coming to carry me through this. There never had been.Marcus came home early that evening, and something soft in his face when the door opened made my stomach drop before he'd even spoken."Hey." He kissed my temple like

ElenaFiles received. First move made. Sleep well, Mrs Blackwood.I must have read that message ten times before the words stopped meaning anything. Sleep well. I actually laughed once, alone in the dark kitchen, a short flat sound that didn't even sound like me. As if sleep was still something my life had room for.My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Not the small tremor I'd gotten used to from the cancer. This was something else. Plain fear, the kind I remember from being a kid at the top of a diving board, except this time there was no one waiting underneath to catch me.I thought about my mother for a second, I don't know why. Maybe some part of me wanted someone, anyone, to tell me I was doing the right thing.She would have hated this. She would have hated what I'd turned into to make it happen. And still I sat there in the dark and I didn't undo it. I couldn't. There wasn't time left to be the kind of woman who takes things back.I forced myself to breathe until my hands settled. U

ElenaI stood on that pavement for forty-three seconds. I know because I counted. When the cancer headaches blurred my thinking I had started counting things to stay sharp. Small anchors to keep me inside my own head when my own head was trying to slide away.Forty-three seconds to decide.Then I put my phone in my bag and walked to my car.I drove home. I know that sounds insane. But here is the thing about a man like Marcus Blackwood: he was powerful because people were afraid of him. The moment you stopped being afraid, the moment you walked toward him instead of away, his entire playbook lost its first chapter.Running looked like guilt. Guilt gave him everything.So I drove home, checked my reflection once in the rearview mirror, and walked through the front door like a woman who had simply been to see a friend.He was in the living room. Standing — Marcus only sat when he was comfortable and he was not comfortable. He stood in the middle of that expensive room in his shirt sleev

ElenaThe address Damian sent led me to a street with no signage and a building with no name. Just a black door with a brass handle and a man standing outside who looked at me once, checked his phone, and stepped aside without a word.I walked in.That morning I had woken still tasting the knowledge of it, sitting in my chest like a stone. Marcus had put something in my food. At a private dinner he arranged himself. With his own hands. For me. His wife.Hope you gave her the dose expected for her to go faster.I had replayed Sophia’s voice every hour since I crouched on that cold corridor floor. Calm. Practical. Like she was asking about a delivery schedule. And Marcus answering just as calmly.They knew about the cancer. And instead of telling me, they had decided to help it along.I got up, showered, dressed, and did not cry once.By midday Sophia was in the kitchen like nothing had happened. She didn’t know I’d been in that corridor. She didn’t know about the USB drive sitting in m