Novels by EllyPen

Barbara.**I stood in front of Dante and looked at his wet eyes and the small shake in his hands. A man who was lying would not look this hurt.For years, this face had been my home.When my father shut every door on me, Dante was the one who opened a new one.He stayed on the phone with me until I fell asleep when I was scared, and he remembered my birthday when nobody else did.How could I throw all of that away because of one bad night?"I choose you." I said, and my voice shook. "I am staying with you, Dante."Behind me, Graham let out a short, cold laugh.I did not turn around.I knew the look he would give me, the one that said I was blind, and tonight I did not want anyone telling me what to see."Enjoy your life, Barbara." he said.The front door closed behind him, and the sound went right through my chest.It hurt more than I expected, and for a second I wanted to run after him and explain myself, which made no sense at all.I pushed the feeling down.Graham had never loved

Barbara.**I reached for the car door again, and Graham caught my wrist before I could open it."Don't." he said."Let go of me!""What are you going to do in there, cry in front of them?"I pulled my hand back, and my wrist stayed warm where his fingers had been, which annoyed me. "I need to see it up close.""You already saw it. If you go in there, you will look desperate, and you already look pathetic enough for one night."That landed in the one place that was already bleeding, and I think he knew it. "I did not ask for your opinion.""Good, because I am not giving it to help you. I just don't want to watch you make a fool of yourself."I looked at the house.The light upstairs was still on, and somewhere behind that glass the man I loved was tying the laces of another woman's wedding dress.I could not drive away from that.A small, stubborn part of my heart still whispered that maybe it was not what it looked like, and I needed to see his face to kill that whisper."Then don't

Barbara.**Graham and I looked at each other, and then we both turned to the lawyer, who was still holding the file like it had done nothing wrong.My mouth felt dry.I swallowed and leaned closer to his desk. "Sir, please, can we get a phone number or a description of the person who came here earlier?"He looked at us for a long time, the way a man looks at two strangers who ask too many questions, and I could not blame him.He had no idea who the real Barbara was, and he had already said more than he should have.He cleared his throat. "I would like to help you, but I cannot give out important details about a client. But there is one thing I can show you, though."I held my breath and prayed it would be something that could help me.He turned the file toward us and ran his finger down the page. "These are the names they wrote down. The lady is Barbara Lincoln. And the man is Graham Del Mundo."The room tilted.I heard the name, but my brain refused to take it in.Graham Del Mundo??

Barbara.**I paced the room with my arms folded and my head so full of noise that I could not hold one clear thought, and when I finally stopped and stared at Graham, he was sitting on my bed like a man waiting for a bus."So what is the way forward right now?" I asked.He looked at me for a long time and sighed heavily. "What is your name again?"My eyes went wide, because he could not be serious.He had known me for years, since the day I started dating Dante, and we had fought more times than I could count, and right now we only stood in the same room because we shared the same enemy.How could he not know my name?"It is Barbara." I said, rolling my eyes. "Graham, what the hell is wrong with you?"He acted as if I was talking to someone else. "Oh yes, Barbara. So we are going to go forward with a plan to make sure he does not sign that document."I walked closer to him. "I think I have a plan."He raised one brow, which was his way of telling me to go on."Dante knows you are not

Barbara.**I was still laughing when I pushed myself up on the bed and Graham stood in the middle of the room looking at me like I had lost my mind.He had no idea what was going on, and the confusion on his face only made me laugh harder."Graham..." I said, wiping my eyes, "do you really believe my father would send you this? The mafia lord, who I have not seen in years, and who may not even remember my name? You think that man types text messages?"He raised one eyebrow, which was his way of saying he needed more.I cleared my throat and held up his phone. "Fine, let me read it to you again, and you tell me if this sounds like a man who works with action and not words."I looked at the screen, and I almost laughed again, because the number that sent it was the same number that told me to come to 112 Lakeman Street the previous day.I had saved it in my head before I drove to that lonely town, just in case I never came back.I remembered Dante saying he sent that message only to su

Barbara.**Graham was sitting on my bed with his back straight and a gun pointed at my face, like the room was his and I was the one who walked in without knocking."How did you get into my apartment?" I rolled my eyes, because I was too tired to be scared, or maybe that was just what I told myself. "And what are you doing here?"He did not answer.He just looked at me, and I stared back at him for a long time with my heart beating hard, trying to understand if this was a sick joke or if the man had finally lost his mind.All day I had been telling myself the same thing: go home, take a bath, sleep a little, and be ready before Dante comes back with a fresh set of lies.I had cried in my car until my eyes burned and my chest felt empty, and now I came home to this."You should be asking why I have a gun, not how I got in." he said.I threw my bag on the bed and it landed right next to his knee, and he did not even blink.Honestly, I was not afraid of dying that day. I knew worse thin

Drake.My hand did not shake. That surprised me.I stood over Hunter with a gun pointed at his face, and I waited to feel hatred. But all I felt was tired, down to my bones.He lay on his back in the wet gravel with his eyes half closed. His lip was split open. One eye was swollen shut, and dried blood ran in dark lines down his neck.His shirt was torn, and he held one arm tight against his ribs as if he were afraid they would fall apart.Behind me, one of the guards shifted on his feet. "Sir, say the word."The rain had almost stopped.The guards stood in a half circle around us with their guns raised and their faces tight. The only sound was Hunter's breathing, rough and wet, like something was broken in his chest."How did you find this place?" I asked."Years ago, I carried bags for Mr. Machorace driver." His voice was thin. "I heard him mention a house by a lake that belonged to your mother. I did not know why I remembered it until tonight."My stomach dropped.If Hunter had hea

Drake.For one long second, nobody in that room breathed.I was shot at once, years ago, at a business dinner my father insisted I attend.I still remember the silence right after the bang, that strange, stretched moment before the pain arrived.This was the same silence.The words had already left his mouth, the damage was done, and we were only waiting for it to land.He stood frozen in the doorway. His face had gone grey. "Sir..." he whispered, "I did not know she was..."Behind him, Lydia swayed on her feet.And in the bed, Rose looked at me with wide, wet eyes, and I saw something in them that broke my heart.She was not afraid for herself.She was afraid for me.She was waiting for me to fall apart.My father had a saying. When the walls fall, do not stare at the ruins. Build something new out of the bricks.I hated that I thought of him in that moment. But I used his lesson anyway, because it was the only weapon I had.I turned on Caleb with all the anger I had been holding ins

Rose. The hospital was too quiet that night, and I hated every minute of it. The machine beside my bed beeped slowly and steadily, as if it did not know how close I had come to losing everything. Maya was still safe inside me, and I had to keep telling myself that. Every few minutes I pressed my hand to my stomach and waited for the small, stubborn movement that told me she was still fighting. Drake sat in the chair beside me. He had not slept at all. His shirt was creased, his eyes were red, and he held my hand as if the bed might swallow me the moment he let go. "You should rest..." I whispered. "I will rest when you are safe." He kissed my knuckles gently. "Not before." A few hours earlier, he had sat on the edge of this same bed and told me the truth about Hunter. He told me about the drip, the small bag, and the plan Mr. Machorace had given his own son. I had listened without breathing. The man who had put a ring on my finger and promised to protect me had been walki

Lydia.I was almost at the docks when I noticed the headlights behind me.They were steady and patient, and they matched my speed no matter how many turns I took. They never fell back, and they never came closer either.My hands tightened around the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white, and my heart slammed hard against my ribs.I tried to tell myself it was nothing, maybe a tired driver on his way home, or just my mind playing tricks on me after everything that had happened tonight.But I had worked with this family for years, and the instinct that kept me alive in rooms full of dangerous people was telling me not to believe that lie.I turned sharply into a narrow side street and watched the mirror. The headlights turned right behind me without any hesitation at all.It was not a coincidence.My chest tightened with fear and I pressed harder on the gas.I weaved through quiet streets I barely knew, trying to put some distance between me and whoever was back there.The cash

Rose.The door clicked shut behind Drake, and the silence that followed felt enormous, pressing down on me from every corner of the room.I lay there with my hand still resting over my stomach, staring at the ceiling, and for the first time all night I let myself actually sit inside what had happened instead of simply surviving it, one breath after another, instead of just pushing through to whatever came next.Hunter wanted me dead.I said the words slowly in my head, turning them over again and again, waiting for them to finally feel real.They did not.Somewhere underneath the grief and the fear, a small, stubborn part of me kept reaching for an explanation that made it make sense, kept trying to find the version of events where Hunter was not truly capable of what Drake had described.I thought about the night he came back to me in that dark lot, the way he had held me like I was something fragile and precious, something he could not believe was real.I thought about his hands tre

Rose.The nurse looked up from the paper, her eyes moving between Drake and me, and for a moment the silence in the room felt thicker than anything I had survived all night, every machine beeping softly in the background the only sound filling the gap."The results confirm paternity at ninety nine point nine percent," she said carefully. "Mr. Drake Machorace is the biological father."The words hit me strangely, not like relief, not like fear, but something caught between the two, settling slowly into my chest like a stone dropping through still water.I looked at Drake, and found him already looking at me, his face unreadable, his hands gripping the edge of my bed like he needed something solid to hold onto, like the news had knocked the air clean out of him."Mine?" he asked quietly, almost to himself, like he was testing the word for the first time. "She is mine...."The nurse gave a small, gentle smile and excused herself, leaving the folder on the table beside my bed before slipp