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Stifling Compulsion

last update publish date: 2025-12-25 00:16:14

Adrian

Miguel does not knock anymore. He has not since he came back from the Maldives and claimed the east wing like it was always his. Some habits never die. Sworn brothers don’t ask permission to exist in each other’s space.

I hear his footsteps before I see him. Bare feet. He hates shoes indoors. Always has. “You’re pacing,” he says mildly, leaning against the doorframe. “Which means you’re thinking too much.” “I pace when I’m working.” “You pace like this when
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  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Woman Who Disappeared

    GwenThe drive to Essexville was made under a silence that felt purposeful rather than empty.Adrian remained focused on the road while I studied the information Sebastian had forwarded to my phone. Aurelia Cruz had disappeared twenty-seven years ago, yet the account bearing her name had remained active throughout the years. Someone had accessed it twelve minutes after we discovered the underground room. The timing was too precise to be coincidence.I opened the photograph again. Aurelia stood beside my father at a family gathering. She looked younger than I had expected, perhaps in her early twenties, with the same dark eyes that had stared back at me from old family photographs.There was something else. Aurelia was wearing a pendant. I enlarged the image. A small circular pendant hung against her blouse. Three narrow lines crossed its center. The symbol from my notebook. My pulse quickened. “Adrian.”He glanced at the screen.“Zoom in.”I did and his expression became thoughtful.“T

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Name In The Ledger

    GwenThe name on the page seemed to alter the room around me. Aurelia Cruz. I read it again, hoping that familiarity would come with the second glance. It did not. “I have never heard that name,” I said.Adrian kept his eyes on the ledger. “Neither have I.” The answer unsettled me more than recognition would have.Aurelia was not listed among the people we had spent months investigating. She was not connected to Mason, Kai, Marcus, or Camilla in any of the information Adrian had shown me. Yet her name appeared beneath a designation that seemed to sit above Marcus himself.A crash sounded from upstairs. Adrian closed the ledger and moved toward the door. “We need to leave.” I followed him into the corridor. The gunfire had stopped, but voices carried faintly through the ceiling. Security personnel were moving through the farmhouse above us.We climbed the stairs quickly. When we reached the kitchen, Sebastian was standing near the rear entrance with his weapon lowered but ready. “Three

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    Beneath The Farmhouse

    GwenThe farmhouse was only twenty minutes away, but Adrian drove as though every second mattered.I sat beside him in silence, watching the darkness slide past the windows. The number seventeen remained lodged in my thoughts, refusing to become an ordinary number again.Sebastian and Matteo followed in a separate vehicle, while two security cars approached the property from different directions. No one knew what waited beneath the farmhouse. That was precisely what bothered me.When Adrian finally turned onto the narrow road leading to the property, the farmhouse appeared exactly as I remembered it. Dark windows. Weathered walls. A porch that looked harmless enough to belong to an elderly couple who had spent decades tending vegetables and complaining about the weather.Nothing about it suggested that a hidden room beneath the building had just become the most important discovery we had made in months. Adrian parked several metres from the house. He did not reach for the door immedia

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Mark Beneath The Ink

    Gwen Adrian did not turn the notebook over immediately. His thumb remained against the lower corner of the page, covering part of the strange symbol as though he were afraid that moving too quickly might somehow disturb what we had just uncovered. I studied his face. “What document?” He lifted his eyes from the page. “A financial transfer record.” The warmth that had settled between us moments earlier did not disappear, but the atmosphere changed. The investigation had found another thread, and Adrian was already following it. “When did you see it?” “Three months ago.” “That long?” “I did not know what it meant then.” He moved the notebook closer to the lamp and examined the symbol again. The circle was small enough that I had initially mistaken it for a decorative mark. Three lines crossed through it at different angles, creating a pattern that looked almost insignificant beneath the handwritten warning. Adrian reached for his phone. “I need the photograph.” “Of the documen

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    Learning Us Again

    Gwen The warmth of Adrian's hand remained against mine long after neither of us had anything left to say. I used to think silence between two people meant there were things they were afraid to say. With Adrian, I was beginning to understand that silence could mean the opposite. Sometimes there was nothing that needed explaining. Sometimes being beside the person you loved was enough. I looked at our hands again, almost expecting the sight to frighten me. It didn't. That surprised me. Six months ago, even imagining myself sitting this close to Adrian had filled me with guilt. I had spent so long believing that the woman who returned to him was somehow damaged beyond recognition that I couldn't understand why he would still want her. Now, sitting beside him with his fingers intertwined with mine, I realized that perhaps I had been asking the wrong question all along. I had kept asking whether I was still worthy of Adrian. I had never stopped to ask whether Adrian had already

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Hand I Never Lost

    GwenThe moment Adrian said Camilla's name, the library seemed to lose all warmth. I stared at him. Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke. The notebook rested heavily in my lap. For the first time since finding it, I wasn't afraid of what it might reveal about me.I was afraid of what it might reveal about her. Because despite everything we had uncovered, there were still gaps. Still questions. Still moments where logic required assumptions. We knew Camilla wanted me gone. We knew she benefited from my disappearance. We knew she manipulated my family. We knew she worked with Kai.Yet wanting something and orchestrating something were not always the same. The notebook threatened to erase that distinction completely. My voice felt strangely distant when I finally spoke. "What did it say?" Adrian didn't answer immediately.His gaze dropped briefly to the black notebook. Then returned to me. "I think you should read it yourself." Normally, I would have argued. Today I understood. Some

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Breaking Point

    Gwen Morning came too quickly. I had not slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Kayla falling, crying, bleeding. Her tiny arm in a cast. Her voice calling for me. I kept watch by her bed until the door opened, and the air in the room turned heavy. Mason.He filled the doorway like a storm clou

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Moment Everything Shattered

    Gwen The hours after Mason left dragged like years. I sat staring at the roses until the light outside faded to dusk. The scent clung to me, sweet, suffocating, and impossible to ignore.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him again, that perfect smile hovering over me, his voice dripping with apol

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    The Monster Brings Flowers

    Gwen When I woke again, the sunlight was fading, slipping through the blinds in long golden lines. The room felt too clean, too white, too quiet. Somewhere, a clock ticked, steady and indifferent. My head ached, but my heart...my heart was worse.Dr. Higgins’ words wouldn’t stop replaying. “Childr

  • A Kiss For Every Bruise    Undecided

    Gwen Unfortunately, my peace did not last long, because I woke up. I thought I had finally found solace in the darkness, but even the darkness did not want me. It spat me back out into the harsh light.The glare of white walls and the sharp scent of antiseptic told me exactly where I was. Back in

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