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Justice Before Healing Is Just Another Violation

last update publish date: 2025-12-20 01:04:01

Adrian’s POV

Kayla fell asleep with her fist wrapped around my thumb. She had done that more often lately, reaching for me without looking, as if she trusted I would still be there when her eyes closed. Miguel called it object permanence rebuilding. I called it the most terrifying privilege of my life.

I sat beside her bed long after her breathing evened out, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, the faint crease between her brows that only appeared when she dreamed. Some nights she sti
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  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Woman In the Mirror

    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

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Call at 2:13 A.M.

    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

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Thing About Panic

    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

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    Dinner With the Devil

    GwenThe house felt much more hollow after my mother left. I sat curled on the library sofa long after sunset pretending to read while rain lashed softly against the tall windows. The book remained open to the same page for nearly forty minutes. I kept hearing her answer in my head. "Yes." But fractured slightly around the edges. Like belief forced through fear.Matteo eventually entered carrying two glasses of wine. “You’re brooding theatrically,” he informed me. “I learned from Sebastian.” “Fair.” I accepted the glass quietly.The library lights glowed warm against dark wooden shelves while thunder rolled faintly beyond the estate. As children, storms used to bring us here together with blankets and stolen desserts while our father pretended not to notice.The memory hurt unexpectedly. Because suddenly I realized that before Camilla, before Mason, before Kai, before all the violence…I had once belonged somewhere effortlessly. I missed that girl sometimes. “She’ll come back,” Matteo

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Invitation

    GwenMy mother avoided looking at me the entire morning. Not obviously and that was the worst part. It happened in fragments. A pause too long before answering me, eyes sliding away during breakfast, hands trembling slightly whenever Camilla’s name surfaced in conversation.Hairline fractures. That was what Adrian called them once during one of our late-night conversations. “Control rarely collapses dramatically,” he had said quietly. “It breaks in tiny uncomfortable pieces first.” At the time, I had been talking about myself. Now I realized he could have been describing my family too.I stood near the kitchen windows watching rain collect against the garden stonework while Matteo scrolled through financial reports across the island counter. The house felt restless lately. Like something beneath it had begun shifting structurally.“You didn’t sleep,” Matteo observed without looking up. “Neither did you.” “Fair.” A faint smile tugged briefly at his mouth before disappearing. Silence se

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    What Mothers Choose

    Author's POV Camilla knew something shifted before anyone spoke. Elenna Cruize did not answer her morning calls immediately anymore. Forty minutes yesterday. Twenty-three this morning. Insignificant to ordinary people but not to Camilla.For her, attachment patterns mattered. Emotional dependency revealed itself through rhythm...response time, tone changes, hesitation and eye contact. And Luciana had begun hesitating. Which meant Gwen was succeeding and that was totally unacceptable.Camilla stood silently inside her penthouse office overlooking the city while one of Kai’s remaining operatives waited near the door, nervous. As he should be. “You sent the photographs too early,” Camilla said calmly. The man swallowed. “We thought pressure would destabilize her.”Camilla turned slowly as cold irritation sharpened her features. “And instead?” “She’s becoming more reliant on Salvador.” Exactly...Idiot. Fear only isolated people when they lacked emotional anchors. Gwen now had Adrian, Seb

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    When The Fiery Wolf Speaks

    Alejandro/ Inferno The Haven of Shadows was never meant to impress anyone. It was not carved from marble or crowned with banners like the courts of kings. No towering walls. No ceremonial guards.Just stone. Old, breathing stone that had seen too much blood to pretend it was holy. Twenty–nine soul

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Sound Of Silence

    GwenSilence used to terrify me. Not the peaceful kind, the heavy kind. The kind that pressed in on my ears until my own thoughts sounded dangerous. The kind Mason used as punishment. The kind Camilla weaponized, dressing it up as “rest” and “reflection” while my mind was being slowly unstitched. B

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    Fault Lines

    Gwen The realization did not arrive all at once. It came in fragments. Like hairline fractures spreading beneath a surface everyone else believed was solid. I noticed it first in my body. The way my shoulders no longer curled inward when Camilla entered a room. The way my breathing stayed even wh

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    Silent Rage

    GwenI learned, slowly, that silence frightened people more than rage ever could. The Cruise villa had always been loud. Voices overlapping, footsteps echoing, glass clinking against marble like punctuation marks in conversations that never truly ended. Even after my return, after the months where

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