MasukGwenMy mother dropped the papers. Not dramatically, just that her fingers simply stopped holding them. The pages slipped softly onto the sitting room carpet while silence swallowed the entire space whole. Nobody moved immediately. Not Sebastian. Not me. Even the rain outside seemed quieter somehow.My mother stared at the scattered documents like they were written in another language entirely. “She wouldn’t…” Her voice failed halfway through the sentence. “Camilla wouldn’t…” But she could not finish it anymore. Because the evidence existed physically now. Numbers. Transfers. Dates. Reality.Sebastian crouched slowly to gather the papers again, his expression gentler than I had seen in weeks. “Mom.” She backed away from him instinctively. Fear flashed through her face again. Not fear of Sebastian. Fear of what accepting this would do to her. “I defended her,” she whispered.The words tore through me unexpectedly. Not because they were new. Because this time she sounded horrified by it
GwenI should have known peace wouldn’t last longer than a few hours. The morning with my mother had felt fragile but real. Not healing exactly, but movement. Like watching ice crack slowly enough to hear water beneath it. By evening, everything fractured again.I found her in the east sitting room just after sunset. She was standing beside the fireplace gripping her phone so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. The curtains were open behind her, rain-dark skies swallowing the last traces of daylight outside. And she looked terrified. Actually terrified.“Mom?” She turned too quickly and guilt flashed across her face before disappearing. “What happened?” “Nothing.” Of course, I knew that was a lie but I did not point it out. Instead, I moved closer carefully. Her breathing was uneven again. Not grief this time but fear. “Did Camilla call?” Silence.That was answer enough. Something cold moved through me immediately. “What did she say?” My mother looked away. “She’s worried about me.” I
Author's POV The porcelain cup shattered against the wall. Tea spluttered across white marble and cream silk curtains in a violent spray. Nobody in the room moved. Not Dr. Weston. Not the two operatives standing near the doorway. Not the house staff quietly lowering their eyes. Camilla stood motionless at the center of the sitting room, chest rising once, twice then relaxing completely. “Repeat what Sebastian said.” The operative swallowed. “He told Elena that emotional dependency created under manipulation can feel like grief attachment.” Camilla’s expression did not change. Which made her infinitely more frightening. “And Elena?” The man hesitated. “She listened.” Silence. Terrible silence. Camilla walked slowly toward the ruined teacup fragments scattered across the marble floor. Six years....Six careful years threading herself into the emotional fabric of the Cruize family. And now Gwen Cruize was pulling at the seams harder than expected. Not because Gwen was smarter. Not be
GwenThe next morning, my mother wouldn’t come downstairs. Mrs. Alvarez eventually brought breakfast trays up to her room after several failed attempts from my father to coax her out. Nobody said the word breakdown. But it lingered over the house anyway.I sat at the dining table untouched coffee cooling between my hands while Sebastian worked silently from his tablet across from me. Matteo paced constantly. Like movement might stop him from thinking too hard. “She answered Camilla’s calls,” he muttered suddenly. Sebastian didn’t look up. “How many?” “Three times already.” My stomach tightened. Of course she did.Emotional dependency always intensified during instability. Last night’s confrontation would have driven my mother directly toward the person she associated with safety. Camilla knew that. Which meant she was probably reinforcing the attachment right now.The thought made nausea rise sharply inside me. Sebastian finally looked up from the tablet. “She’s isolating her emotiona
GwenI couldn’t breathe properly after that. The foyer conversation ended eventually, but not really. Nothing resolved. Nothing settled.My mother locked herself inside her bedroom before anyone could stop her. My father remained downstairs staring into untouched whiskey for nearly an hour afterward while Sebastian quietly made calls from the study.Matteo hovered. That was the only word for it. Hovering like he wanted to protect something fragile but didn’t yet know how. And me? I went numb. Not emotionally empty but worse because I felt overfull.I stood beneath scorching water for almost forty minutes after midnight trying to wash off the feeling of hearing my own mother ask: What happens to me if Camilla goes? As if losing her frightened her more than losing me once already had. The thought hollowed something deep inside my chest.By the time I changed into sleep clothes, the storm outside had worsened. Rain battered violently against the windows while distant thunder rolled acros
GwenCamilla left ten minutes later. She kissed my mother’s cheek softly near the doorway, spoke in gentle reassuring tones, then glided back toward her waiting car with the same composed elegance she wore everywhere.Irregardless, I had seen the panic she so dearly, tried to conceal. Not because she feared exposure immediately. It was because she was losing emotional certainty. And people like Camilla depended on certainty the way normal people depended on oxygen.The front doors closed behind her and a heavy silence flooded the foyer instantly. My mother stood motionless near the staircase, arms folded tightly around herself as though holding something inside from spilling apart. “Mom,” I said carefully. “I’m tired.” The words came too quickly. Prepared and defensive. My chest tightened. “You were crying.” “No.” The denial arrived automatically.I stared at her quietly. She used to hate dishonesty. When we were children, she once made Sebastian apologize to me for lying about breaki
Alejandro Miguel did not speak right away. He rarely did when the silence mattered. We were seated on the terrace just beyond the playroom, the late afternoon light slanting low across the stone. Kayla’s laughter drifted faintly through the open doors, soft, unguarded, the sound of a child who ha
Adrian’s POV That night, after Kayla finally fell asleep, I sat on the floor outside her room longer than necessary. Miguel had told me not to hover. Be present, not looming, he’d said. But old instincts died hard. I listened to the soft rhythm of her breathing through the cracked door, the occas
Adrian’s POVThe days after that morning did not soften. Instead, they deepened.Kayla did not test me with messes anymore. She had crossed that bridge and catalogued the result. Dropping things no longer gave her information. So she shifted tactics, the way traumatized children do when they realiz
Adrian’s POVI guess my daughter had not fully accepted that I could be different from Mason Burkeley, because she tested me again two days later. This time, it was not quiet.Miguel had warned me not to mistake progress for peace. When safety begins to take root, he had said, fear does not disappe







