تسجيل الدخولمشاركة
Chapter 29
تاريخ النشر:
2026-03-29 16:21:16
أحدث فصل
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 81: Forgiveness
POV: Nora I went back three weeks later. Not with Aria this time. Just me, on a Wednesday morning, registered through the standard process, sitting in the same chair at the same partition with the same ambient sound of the visiting room around me. Marcus came through the door and when he saw me alone his expression did a brief recalibration and then settled into something careful and present. We picked up the receivers. "I didn't know you were coming," he said. "I registered yesterday." I set my bag on the floor. "I wanted to talk without managing her at the same time." He nodded. "How is she." And I told him. Not a summary, not the edited version. The actual recent weeks of Aria at two years and three months old. The running before she had committed to stable walking. The markers at the studio and the understanding that her work went on the wall. The pigeon incident outside the facility three weeks ago that had lasted fifteen minutes and involved a level of commitment I had f
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 80: Through Glass
POV: Nora The woman on the phone said he had withdrawn it that morning without explanation. I sat with that for a moment. Then I asked if visitor registration was still possible for a standard visit on the hearing date, separate from the parole process. She checked and said yes, standard visits were still being processed for that day. I registered. I spent the next three days trying to understand why he had withdrawn it and arriving at the same answer each time. He had asked me to come to the facility and I had called to register and somehow that information had reached him before I intended it to, probably through the facility's processing system, probably through his lawyer who would have been notified of any visitor registration connected to his case. He had understood that I was going to come and he had withdrawn the application because he didn't want the visit to be about the parole. He had said in the letter he wasn't asking me to support his release. Withdrawing the applica
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 79: The Letter
POV: Nora Roland's call lasted forty minutes. What he told me about Elias's funding required two days of sitting with it before I could hold it without it shifting shape every time I tried to look at it directly. It was not what I had been told. It was not what Elias had believed either, which was the part that complicated everything. I put it aside after those two days because I had learned over the past year that some information needed a specific moment to be acted on and that moment had not arrived yet. Marcus's letter came on a Thursday. It had been processed through the facility the same way all his letters were, stamped and handled, the envelope a little worn by the time it reached me. I had been receiving letters from him every six weeks or so since the sentencing, always thoughtful, always asking nothing, and I had gotten used to the particular feeling of seeing his handwriting on an envelope. Not comfortable exactly. Familiar. This one was different from the first line.
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 78: One Year
POV: Nora The design firm was called Ashford Studio. Sera had suggested keeping my father's name in it and I had resisted for about a week before understanding that she was right. Not as a memorial, not as sentiment, but because the name was mine too and I had spent long enough letting other people define what it meant. Putting it on a studio door was a small act of reclamation that turned out to feel significant every time I unlocked that door in the morning. We had four clients in the first month. Eleven by the third. By the time a year had passed from the custody determination we had a team of six and a waiting list and a reputation for the kind of work that came from someone who actually looked at what a client needed rather than what was easiest to produce. I was good at it. I had always been good at it. The difference now was that I knew I was good at it and built accordingly. Aria was two years and three months old. She had opinions about everything and expressed them wit
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 77: Primary
POV: Nora I didn't respond to Roland Vance's message that night. I forwarded it to Marsh and to Chen and then I put my phone face down and sat with Aria until she fell asleep and then I sat in the quiet of her room for a while longer. Roland Vance reaching out directly meant something had shifted in his calculation. A man who had stepped out of a treeline on a private island and then disappeared for months did not text from an unknown number without a reason. Whatever the reason was, it could wait until after Friday. Friday came with the particular weight of days that contain things you cannot control. The determination hearing was scheduled for ten. I arrived at nine forty with Marsh's associate and we sat at our table and I kept my hands flat on the surface in front of me and looked at the room and let myself feel the full weight of what was about to happen without managing it away. Aria was with Sera. I had kissed her head before I left and she had grabbed my collar and held i
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 76: The Stand
POV: Nora The unknown number called three times and left no message and I didn't answer any of them. I had learned over the past year that unknown numbers carrying urgent things eventually identified themselves, and unknown numbers that didn't were either wrong numbers or the kind of contact that required me to be in a safer position before engaging. I was standing in a courthouse corridor after three days of testimony and I was not in a safer position. I went home to Aria and the number didn't call again that night. Day four was Elias on the stand. His lawyers had advised against it. Marsh's associate had told me that, through the information channels that existed between legal teams in family proceedings, which were more porous than either side pretended. His lawyers had wanted to rest on the submitted evidence and the expert testimony they had lined up about his therapy progress and his financial stability and his legitimate business transformation. Elias had overruled them.
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 27
POV: Nora I sat with what she'd said about Elias for a long moment. Twice as a witness. Once as a suspect. I didn't let it show on my face because I had been practicing not letting things show on my face for months and I was getting competent at it. But underneath the practiced neutrality I was
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 24
POV: Nora The new apartment was on the fourth floor of a building with two separate exits, a doorman who worked twenty-four hours, and a camera covering every corridor. Elias had it ready within three hours of leaving the last place, which told me he'd had it prepared before the situation required
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 13
POV: Nora He talked for forty minutes straight. I didn't interrupt. I sat with my hands wrapped around a cup of tea someone had brought without me asking, and I listened to Elias lay out twelve years of my father's life in a way that made me feel like I'd never known him at all. The network had
Bred for Betrayal Chapter 31
POV: Nora I found out about the PI on a Wednesday. Elias told me over the kitchen table with the same tone he used for everything operational, level and direct, no softening around the edges. He'd identified the tail three days earlier, a man who had been appearing in the same radius as my moveme
قد تعجبك أيضًا
Her Accidental Billionaire Husband
Lexusstar writes687.6K وجهات النظرSEX WITH THE VIRGIN MAID
Wild Dreams2.1M وجهات النظرOne night with Ex-Husband
Anjaani541.4K وجهات النظرAddicted to Loving You: The Paranoid and Domineering Boss's Convicted Wife
Gu family's Little Bamboo687.1K وجهات النظرRebirth of the Betrayed Luna
Rikki60 وجهات النظرThe Surgeon's Debt
lady.serene86 وجهات النظرZero Mercy: The Aloof Ex's Meltdown
Strictly Eden287 وجهات النظر365 ways to hell - Erotica Collections
DeDe41 وجهات النظر
