Novels by Jhumie_writes

The sun had barely climbed over the hills when Lucien found him.Julio sat on the crumbling stone bench just beyond the olive grove, a cigarette burning low between his fingers. Morning light painted the world gold, but there was no warmth in it, just the kind of silence that followed grief and betrayal.Lucien didn’t announce himself. He didn’t need to.Julio didn’t look up as Lucien approached, but he shifted slightly, just enough to make space beside him. It was all the invitation Lucien needed.He sat down, their shoulders nearly brushing, the tension still heavy between them.For a long while, neither spoke.The only sounds were the rustle of leaves in the breeze and the distant clang of hammers from the estate, where the wounded walls were being rebuilt, like everything else.Julio took a long drag of his cigarette, then held it out toward Lucien, offering it without a word.Lucien stared at the smoke curling upward before shaking his head. “Emilia hates the smell.”Julio snorted

Julio slammed the door behind him, the sound like a gunshot echoing down the corridor.He didn’t care.Didn’t care that Lucien shouted after him.Didn’t care that Emilia’s eyes followed him, pleading.Didn’t care that the guards flinched as he passed, stepping aside with wide, nervous eyes.He stormed through the estate like a storm that had outlived its purpose, too angry to speak, too betrayed to breathe.He wasn’t anyone.Not to Lucien.Not anymore.His hands trembled as he reached the garden path, gravel crunching beneath his boots. He couldn’t stay inside that house, their house, one second longer. The walls felt like they were watching him, judging him for being the last to know.Lucien had always been more than a boss. He was blood in everything but biology. They’d fought beside each other, killed beside each other, buried men side by side without blinking.And still…Lucien hadn’t told him.He trusted her. The girl he once considered a liability. A pet project. A complication.

The room was dim, lit only by the soft glow bleeding through the sheer curtains. The air still smelled faintly of smoke and iron. Lucien sat back in the armchair near the balcony, his muscles finally relaxing, Emilia’s scent still lingering on his skin.She had let him sleep. He didn’t deserve her patience.Now, quiet reigned,,until it didn’t.The door burst open with a crack loud enough to jolt Lucien to his feet. Julio stormed in, face dark, body taut with fury.Emilia was right behind him, barefoot, dressed in his shirt, her hair wild.“Julio…” she started.“Where is he?” Julio barked, eyes scanning the room before landing on Lucien. “We need to talk.”Lucien moved closer, chest already tight. “Talk then.”Julio’s jaw clenched. “Alone.”Lucien shot a look at Emilia. She stood still, wary but composed. “She stays.”“Lucien..."“I trust her.”Julio’s nostrils flared, but he nodded stiffly. “Fine.”He stalked further in, stopping in the center of the room like he owned the damn floor.

The estate was eerily quiet in the morning light. Soft golden beams cut through cracked windows and dust, highlighting the chaos that had ravaged the night before. Ash still clung to the walls. Blood darkened the crevices between marble tiles. And yet, for the first time in days, silence reigned.Lucien was still asleep.Emilia stood at the edge of the bed, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. His face, usually so sharp, so commanding, was softened in sleep. There was a bruise blooming along his jaw. Dried blood streaked his arms. But in rest, he looked peaceful. Human.He needed the sleep. She wouldn’t wake him.So she slipped away silently, careful not to rouse him, and pulled his discarded shirt over her bare skin. It dwarfed her, hanging past her knees, but it smelled like him, smoke and citrus and war.Her bare feet made no sound as she stepped into the ruined hall. Most of the estate was still dark, quiet, and bleeding. Broken vases. Shattered glass. Burned wallpaper.

The city outside the Moretti estate breathed like it hadn’t just bled.Julio needed out. Out of the smoke. Out of the blood. Out of the pressure building in his skull that no amount of gunfire could quiet.So he slipped out under the cover of night. No guards. No one. Just him and the growl of his black Ducati as it roared down the coastal highway.The brothel was tucked behind a shuttered florist shop, the front lit with a single flickering bulb and a red curtain in the window. No sign. It didn’t need one.Julio didn’t knock.She opened the door before his hand hit the wood.Dark hair. Freckles. Long legs and a wicked mouth. Her name was Kira, though he wasn’t sure if it was real. She never asked why he came, and he never asked who came before him.“Rough night?” she asked, eyeing the cut over his brow and the smear of blood on his jaw.Julio walked in without a word, grabbed her by the waist, and slammed the door shut with his boot.Their mouths collided before they hit the bed.Roug

The weight of her was almost nothing.Lucien held Emilia against his chest, her body limp from exhaustion, her breath shallow and slowing. Her silk robe clung to her in streaks of crimson and soot, the blood of others dried into the fabric like a second skin. She hadn’t washed. She hadn’t asked for maids. She hadn’t spoken since the doors closed behind them.The battlefield still echoed in his head, gunfire, shouting, the sound of glass breaking and bones cracking. But the only thing real now was her. Her warmth. Her silence. The way her cheek rested over his heart, hair wild and matted against his skin.She was slipping.Not away. Just into sleep. The kind of sleep that comes after survival, not safety.Lucien looked down at her, at the blood caked along her thighs, her bare feet streaked with ash, the bruises blooming across her arms where she’d thrown herself into the chaos. She was filthy. Glorious. Silent.But not yet.He pressed his lips to her temple. “You’re not sleeping like t

The file came just after three a.m.No message. No warning.Just a quiet buzz from my encrypted line, followed by a digital packet that unpacked itself in a slow, efficient bleed of data.I didn’t open it right away.Instead, I stood barefoot in the center of the room, nursing black coffee like it could delay what I already knew was coming. The night pressed against the floor to ceiling windows like a question I didn’t want to answer. I have been awake all night, I couldn’t sleep. The thought of ivy had creep into me all day till midnight. There is something going on, I have seen it with my mother, but with ivy, it is different. She is strong, stubborn and difficult to break. It seems different seeing her being mould into something else by Robert and Victor. Eventually, I walked back to my desk and double tapped the screen.One file.One face.One mark.Red.My stomach clenched, of guilt, but not with fear, and with something heavier. Familiar. The way old grief wraps around your ri

The screen glowed softly in the dim room, my phone resting on the nightstand like a live wire. I didn’t want to look at it again, afraid of what I’d find. But I did. Every second, every pull of my finger brought me closer to pieces I couldn’t handle right now.A single new message: Killian: I’m sorry.I stared. The world shook a little.Not “I love you,” not “I’m here,” just “I’m sorry.” Enough. Too much. It carried every apology he’d never said, every absence, every cowardice, every choice he’d made that ended with my world in shreds.I pressed my forehead to the cool wall. Tears came unbidden, hot and sudden. My breathing came in broken shards. Everything in me had clenched, tightened, shut down. And now…opened, spilling.I curled into myself on the bed, hugging knees to my chest. I pressed the phone against my heart like a talisman. And I fell apart.What I felt wasn’t relief. It was heartbreak all over again. Because I loved him. Still do. I hate that I do. And now I knew love woul

The city at night never slept, but Killian Wolfe’s apartment sat high above it all, quiet, detached. He liked it that way. Clean lines, dark stone, silence stretching through the rooms like a second skin. It was a place built for forgetting. A place where nothing reached him unless he allowed it to.And tonight, he couldn’t stop letting her in.He scrolled through his phone with the slow, unfocused rhythm of someone trying to numb himself. News. Markets. Weather. A text from a broker. Then, There she was.Ivy Lancaster.His chest seized before his mind caught up.It was a photo. Her smile was demure. Too demure. Her back was straight. Her clothes expensive and soft, cream silk and pearl earrings.But it was the caption that shattered him.“Adjusting. Slowly. Grateful.”He read it again.And again.The words were wrong. Ivy didn’t speak like that. Ivy was spitfire and sarcasm. She had once written him an entire paragraph about how “grateful” was the kind of word rich men gave their wiv

Morning didn’t come with sound, only light, soft and golden through the linen curtains. It brushed her cheeks like a whisper, but Ivy didn’t stir. Her body woke before her mind, stretching without direction, her hands curling loosely over the sheets.She hadn’t dreamed. Or maybe she had, and the dreams were so quiet she mistook them for death.Her eyes opened. The ceiling above her was ivory with delicate carvings. A room meant to soothe.But Ivy had begun to understand something ugly, Even comfort could be a kind of violence.She sat up slowly.The breakfast tray was already placed near the window, steaming gently. Eggs. Toast. Fruit cut into perfect shapes. She hadn’t heard anyone come in.They moved around her now like she was something sacred, or untouchable.Her robe lay folded on the end of the bed. Next to it, a dress she hadn’t picked: pale yellow with thin straps and a fitted waist, the color of springtime and submission.She stared at it. Then she got up, undressed, and step

Victor stared at the monitor.The new room suited her.Too well.Muted walls, clean lines, light flooding in from high windows, everything about it whispered calm, comfort, safety. A curated illusion. A silk wrapped cage.And Ivy moved within it like a queen in her sanctuary. Brushing her hair with unhurried strokes. Folding her hands in her lap like a woman meditating. Walking barefoot from window to bed like the walls didn’t choke her.Like she had won something.She hadn’t.Victor’s fingers tapped rhythmically against the leather armrest. One beat, then two. His eyes never left the screen.Her silence had once been sweet to him, proof that she was breaking. A subtle kind of surrender. The absence of screams had meant progress.Now it felt… defiant. Rehearsed.Weaponized.A kind of stillness that threatened everything he’d carved into her skin, everything he’d trained into her breath. It wasn’t obedience. It was control.Hers.“She should be grateful,” he muttered under his breath, l

The water scalded as it hit her skin. Silent maids moved around her like ghosts, scrubbing, rinsing, dressing her in something that smelled like roses and money. The bruises bloomed beneath their touch, raw and unhidden, but no one flinched. Not them. Not her.Her robe was gone. In its place, a pale lavender dress with capped sleeves and a cinched waist. Elegant. Controlled. The zipper dragged slowly up her spine like a seal being pressed into flesh.No one spoke.The final touches were clinical: a light gloss on her lips, a brush through her damp hair. Her wrists were red from heat, her face puffy but powdered. One of the maids handed her a pair of soft slippers.And then they left.Ivy stood alone in the bathroom, the sound of the faucet still dripping into silence.She stepped toward the mirror.The girl who stared back wasn’t her. Not the Ivy from her art studio floor in her house. Not the girl who once laughed with Killian in his cabin or whispered dreams of freedom under a Tuscan