Novels by Esther Ernest

"Dead?" Ava's voice cracked on the word. "What do you mean, dead?"Her father did not look at her. His eyes stayed locked on Liam, and the black folder shook in his bloody hand."Ask your husband."Liam did not move. "Grant."Grant stepped between them, one broad hand raised. "Mr. Hart, put the folder down.""Not until he tells her what he did.""I haven't touched Clara," Liam said coldly."Liar!" Her father's voice broke across the room. "She called me an hour before the wedding. She said you had locked her in a car outside the hotel. She said you wanted her files and you would not let her leave."Ava turned to Liam. His face did not change, and somehow that frightened her more than anger would have."Is that true?""No.""She was alive when she called," her father went on, and his voice dropped, shaking now. "I went to the service entrance to find her. A black car was waiting there. A man pulled her inside, and I ran after it. I got this."He held up his injured hand. The handkerchi

The darkness was so complete that Ava could hear her own breathing before she heard anything else.Then Liam's hand closed around her arm and pulled her sideways, away from the table and the door, until her back met the cold wall and his body stood between her and the room."Don't move," he said."I wasn't planning to.""Good."The knocking came again. Three slow knocks, then a pause. It was not the knock of someone in a hurry.Ava realized she was holding a fistful of his shirt. She could feel his heart beating beneath the fabric, steady and strong. She let go. He said nothing about it."Who is that?" she whispered."Not Grant. Grant knocks twice.""Then who?""Quiet."His mouth was close to her ear, so close that his breath moved the loose hair at her temple. On any other night she might have noticed how warm it was. Tonight she only noticed that his whole body was tense, like a man ready to fight someone he could not see.The knocking stopped.For five seconds, nothing happened. Av

Sign it, or I’ll tell the hospital to cancel your mother’s surgery.”Ava stared at the document in Liam’s hand.The reception hall had emptied, but the music still played faintly behind the closed doors. Guests were laughing outside. Waiters were clearing glasses. Somewhere, reporters were waiting for photographs of a happy couple.Inside the private room, Ava stood across from Liam with her wedding ring burning against her finger.“You really enjoy threatening sick women,” she said.Liam’s face stayed calm.“I enjoy making sure people understand the consequences of their choices.”“You knew I wasn’t Clara before the ceremony. You let me marry you anyway. Now you’re acting like I trapped you.”“You did trap me.”“I was forced into that dress.”“And I was forced to marry a woman who disappeared with confidential files.”“Then annul the marriage.”“Not until I find Clara.”Ava laughed without humor.“You want me to help you find her, but you refuse to let me leave?”“I want you close en

You were there the night my father died.Liam’s words cut through the applause.Ava stared at him beneath the lifted veil.The priest was still smiling. The guests were clapping. Cameras flashed from every direction.But Liam no longer looked like a groom.He looked like a man who had finally found the person he had been searching for.Ava’s fingers curled around the bouquet.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”His eyes moved to the scar above her eyebrow. " You had the same scar."“What scar?”“The one you got outside my father’s study.”Ava’s throat tightened.She remembered that night.She had been fourteen. Father had taken her and Clara to the Blackwood estate for a family dinner. The adults had argued behind closed doors while the girls waited in the hallway. Ava had heard shouting. Then Ava had heard shouting.Then she had seen smoke.She had run toward the study, slipped on the marble floor, and hit her head against the corner of a table.The next thing she remembered w

If you don’t walk down that aisle in five minutes, your mother’s surgery will be canceled!"Ava Hart stared at her father through the mirror.For a second, she thought she had heard him wrong.Then he stepped closer and lowered his voice.“You heard me now put on the veil."Ava gripped the edge of the dressing table. Her fingers were cold, but the rest of her body felt like it was burning inside the wedding dress.The dress was too tight around her ribs because it belonged to Clara. The white roses, the silver jewelry, the expensive perfume, even the framed photograph of her smiling beside Liam Blackwood.Ava had never been meant to stand here.She had come to the Blackwood Hotel to stop her sister from making the biggest mistake of her life. She had expected to find Clara crying or arguing with their father.She had not expected Clara to be gone.She had not expected to be shoved into her wedding dress.And she had definitely not expected her father to threaten their mother’s life.