Novel-novel oleh Daphne Scott

POV: Kira"You look like you saw a ghost." Priya dropped onto my couch without waiting for an invitation, the way she always did, balancing two coffees like she owned the place. "Actually, worse. You look like you saw a ghost who owes you money." She jested"It is nothing." I did not look up from the card in my hand, his name engraved in plain black letters, no logo, nothing flashy, just Luciano Rodriguez and a phone number."It is very clear it’s not nothing." She set the coffee down and snatched the card before I could stop her. Her eyebrows went up somewhere near her hairline. "Rodriguez. As in the Rodriguez. As in the man who owns the entire building we clean." She exclaimed "Give it back." I demanded "Why do you have his personal card, Mara." She said my fake name easy as breathing, the way everyone in my current life did, and for a second I almost hated how easily I had let her believe it. "Did something happen. Did he do something to you. Because I swear, rich man or not, I w

POV: Kira"Mara Soto." His voice came through my door before I even got the chance to look through the peephole, low, certain, nothing like a knock from a neighbor or a delivery. "Or should I use Kira."My whole body went cold.I stood frozen for one full second, hand hovering over the lock, running through three years of contingency plans in my head, the go bag under my bed, the second phone taped behind the bathroom mirror, the route out the fire escape I had memorized my first week in this apartment and never once used.I opened the door instead. Running would only confirm what he already seemed to know."I do not know who that is," I said, keeping my voice as flat as I could manage, though my pulse was slamming hard enough that I was sure he could hear it from where he stood.Luciano Rodriguez leaned one shoulder against my doorframe like he had all the time in the world, jacket gone, sleeves rolled up, looking nothing like the exhausted man on the stairwell that morning and every

POV: Luciano"You should sit down for this." Elena set a folder on my desk that evening, thin, but she looked at it like it weighed a hundred pounds."I do not sit for paperwork." I opened it anyway, because Elena did not say things like that without reason, and I trusted her more than I trusted anyone left in my life.The first photo stopped me cold.It was her. The woman from the stairwell, younger, maybe nineteen, standing beside a man I recognized instantly because his face had been in the news for two decades. Her father. Except the caption under the photo did not say Mara Soto."Kira Quezada," Elena said, watching my face carefully. "Only daughter of Rafael Quezada, Quezada Shipping and Freight. Officially deceased three years ago. Car accident, no body recovered, closed casket funeral with a photo instead of a coffin, according to the report.""Except she is very much alive and mopping my stairwell." I laughed"Except that, yes." She said eyeing meI sat down after and smiled

POV: Luciano"Six months." Doctor Whitfield said it plainly, like he was reading a weather report, and I hated him for it even though none of this was his fault. "Perhaps less, if the treatment does not respond well. I am very sorry, Mr Rodriguez."I did not look at him. I looked at my grandmother instead, propped up in the hospital bed with a spine straighter than mine had ever managed to be, and she was not looking at either of us. She was looking out the window like the news did not concern her at all."Say something," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to."What is there to say, Luciano." She finally turned her head. Her eyes were the same eyes that had raised me since I was seven years old, sharp and clear even now, even with a tube in her arm and a death sentence hanging over the room. "I have run this family for forty years. I think I am allowed to die on my own terms.""You are not dying." The words came out before I could stop them, stupid and useless, because

POV: Kira"You're late again, Mara."Priya's voice bounced off the tile, teasing on the surface, but I heard the warning folded inside it too. I checked my watch. Six minutes. Six minutes was nothing on any other floor of this building, but the fortieth floor belonged to Rodriguez Maritime, and up here, six minutes could get a person fired."I got stuck behind a delivery truck," I said, tying my hair back as I grabbed my cart. "Relax. Nobody's even in yet.""Somebody's always in." She lowered her voice like the walls had ears, which, in this building, they probably did. "You know how they are about the executive floors."I did know. I had learned every rule of this place in the six months since I started, which staircase the cameras missed, which supply closet the night guard never checked, which days the family actually came in and which days it was just lawyers pretending to be busy. I knew how to be invisible. Invisible had kept me alive for six years.I told Priya I would take the

(Roman's POV)"You understand what it looks like, do you not?"Councilman Ferris folded his hands ontop of the long table, his expression carefully neutral in the way that always meant he was building toward something considerably less neutral, and I resisted the urge to check the time on my phone for the third time in five minutes."Enlighten me." I said calmly "The Alpha of Darkwood, spending the better part of every week in a human facing bakery, in a town with no standing pack presence, courting the attention of a woman with no verified lineage and a child of uncertain parentage." He said it lightly, almost conversationally, which only made it worse. "It raises questions, Roman. Questions I would rather answer before someone outside this room starts asking them first.""There is nothing to answer. I am overseeing wedding logistics for my cousin, it’s as simple as that""For six weeks.""Weddings take time." I shruggedAcross the table, Daylan Ferris did not look up from the folde

(Ivy's POV)"Mommy, Roman's hands are magic." My daughter exclaimed with excitementI nearly dropped the piping bag for the second time that week, whipping around to find my daughter perched on the counter, flour dusted from her nose to her overalls, watching Roman attempt, badly, to frost a test cupcake under her extremely critical supervision.I had no idea why I allowed him to frost a cupcake in the first place, he must’ve sweet talked me into it."Is that so honey." I smiled without looking up"He made the swirly part go all the way around without stopping." Hazel said this with the grave seriousness of a food critic delivering a verdict. "That is very hard, Mommy. You told me so yourself.""It is very hard," I agreed, fighting another smile."I had a good teacher," Roman said, not looking up from his careful, painfully slow piping technique, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration that looked entirely out of place on a man who led an entire pack."You had five minutes of

(Roman's POV)"Tell me about her."Ivy went very still across the small table, a fork halfway to her mouth, and I watched something complicated move behind her eyes before she set it back down."About who?""You know who." I turned my glass slowly on the table between us, watching the candlelight catch in it rather than watching her, giving her whatever small mercy I could manage. "Mari."The silence stretched long enough that I almost took it back, almost told her to forget I had asked, but then she exhaled, slow and careful, and began."She was loud." A faint, unguarded smile touched her mouth, the first real one I had seen all night. "Obnoxiously loud. She used to sing in the hallways between classes, badly, on purpose, just to make people laugh.""I remember that." The memory surfaced easier than I expected, warm and uncomplicated in a way most of my memories of that year were not. "She sang the school song at every single pep rally like it was an opera.""She thought she was very

(Ivy's POV)"Four dozen cupcakes, two hundred favors, and a groom who cannot decide if he wants chocolate or vanilla. Tell me again why I agreed to this." I asked frustrated Denise's voice carried from the front of the bakery, deadpan and put-upon, and I laughed for what felt like the first time in days, flour dust rising in a small cloud as I dropped another tray onto the cooling rack."You agreed to it because it pays the electric bill for the next four months, I guess" he shrugged "Right. That was it." She poked her head into the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. "Also your future brother in law is out front. And he brought reinforcements.""He is not my—" I stopped myself, heat crawling up my neck. "Marcus is not anyone's anything to me." I spelt out"Uh huh." Denise's grin was entirely too knowing. "Come see for yourself then."I wiped my hands and followed her out front, where Marcus stood at the counter looking like a man who had lost an argument he did not remember sta

(Ivy’s POV)"Oh my God, I need to get home now" I gasped with fearsMy voice did not sound like my own, thin and cracking at the edges, and Roman was already moving before I finished the sentence, keys in hand, Marcus falling into step behind him without needing to be told twice."Ivy." Roman's hand found the small of my back, steering me toward his truck with a steadiness I did not feel anywhere in my own body. "Breathe. We will get there in four minutes." He tried to calm me down"Four minutes is too long, I need to see my family" I choked "It is the truck, or it is me running there on two legs faster than the truck, and I am not letting you watch me shift in the middle of the street in front of half the these people." He repliedA strangled, humorless laugh escaped me despite everything. "Is that supposed to be funny?""It is supposed to get you in the truck." He shrugged It worked.The drive felt like an hour crammed into four minutes, streetlights blurring past the window, my h

Ivy's POV"You are going to wear a hole in that porch if you keep pacing."Denise's voice crackled through the phone, equal parts amused and worried, and I forced myself to stop moving, though my heart did not get the same message."I am not pacing." I shrugged while still pacing"Ivy. I can hear your feet." he repliedI looked down at the porch of the old Ashford estate, the one Roman's family had rented for the wedding week, all white columns and manicured hedges, entirely too grand for a town like Maple Hollow. My feet had, in fact, worn a small track back and forth across the top step."I have to do this," I said, more to myself than to her. "I have to tell him something before someone else tells him the wrong version of it.""Tell him what exactly? The whole thing? The baby thing?""Well not the whole thing." My stomach twisted at even the idea."And if he asks why Bloodmoon would be interested in you specifically?" she askedI did not have an answer for that, which was exactly t