LOGIN**** **Lily’s POV**The restaurant my dad chose was the kind of place that made people speak softer without realizing it.Dark wood, low lighting, white tablecloths, and a waiting list that usually ran weeks. He had reserved a private corner table. Mom wore a simple dress and kept her hands folded too tightly in her lap. Mark sat beside her in a collared shirt, expression carved from stone. I took the chair across from the empty place setting that waited for the man I hadn’t seen in years.He arrived exactly on time.Victor Hale looked nothing like the loud, sharp-edged memory I carried from childhood. The years had polished him. Expensive suit, careful haircut, a watch that caught the light when he extended his hand. His smile was measured and empty. He greeted Mom first with a politeness that felt like a performance, then Mark with a brief nod, then me.“Lily. He smiled.I didn’t take the hand he offered. After a beat he let it fall and sat.The first minutes were pure theater. He
** **Lily’s POV**The message came in the middle of the third morning of the reunion.I was in the kitchen helping Mom unload the dishwasher when her phone buzzed on the counter. She glanced at the screen, frowned, and then went very still. The color drained from her face so quickly that the plate in her hand nearly slipped.“Mom?”She locked the phone, set it face-down, and forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s nothing. Just an old number.”It wasn’t nothing.I watched her for the rest of the morning. She burned the edge of the toast. She forgot the coffee pot was still brewing and overflowed it. When Aunt Clara asked a second time about the seating for the weekend lunch, Mom answered a beat too late. The cousins and uncles moved through the house in their usual orbit of glances and quiet heat, but the undercurrent that had been pure sex the night before now felt layered with something colder.By early afternoon Mom couldn’t keep it contained.She found me in the upstairs
**Lily’s POV**Night two of the reunion the house finally loosened.Music from the backyard barbecue still drifted through the open windows even after most of the older relatives had gone to bed. Aunt Clara and the aunts had retired early. Mom and Kara were in the master bedroom discussing leftover logistics in low voices. The uncles had claimed the living-room couches with glasses of something strong. That left the upstairs quieter than it had any right to be.I was sent to the far guest room for an extra phone charger someone had left behind.I should have known better.The door locked behind me less than ten seconds after I stepped inside. Daniel was already there. Marcus, Jordan, and Caleb followed in a loose, deliberate group. Ethan came last, expression tight with the same jealous heat he had carried since the laundry room. Five of them. The room was dim, lit only by the bedside lamp. Music from outside covered smaller sounds.“Rules,” Ethan said quietly, looking at the others.
****Lily’s POV**The laundry room sat at the back of the house, half a level down from the main hallway, far enough from the living-room noise that the reunion felt muffled. I had been sent for the last stack of clean towels before the evening barbecue. The dryer was still running its final cycle, the low hum covering smaller sounds.I never heard him come in.Ethan closed the door behind him, turned the lock, and had me against the washing machine before I could speak. His mouth was hard, jealous, full of every look the cousins had given me since they arrived and every second he had spent watching them do it. One hand shoved my dress up to my waist. The other yanked my underwear down just far enough.“You let them touch you again,” he said against my lips. Not a question.I didn’t deny it. His fingers slid between my legs and found the evidence—still slick from Daniel and Marcus in the closet only hours earlier. Ethan made a low, angry sound and pushed two fingers inside me roughly.
**Lily’s POV**The reunion settled into the house like humidity.By the second evening the guest rooms were full, the refrigerator was packed, and the backyard lights were already strung for the weekend barbecue. Mom moved from task to task with determined cheerfulness. Kara had claimed the role of unofficial hostess. Aunt Clara kept finding small things to criticize. Rachel watched everything—and me most of all.I was sent to the upstairs hallway closet for more spare blankets.I never made it back with them.A hand closed around my wrist from the shadowed alcove near the linen cupboard and pulled me sideways. Daniel’s body blocked the light first. Marcus stepped in behind me and eased the partially open door shut until only a crack of hallway remained. The narrow space smelled of detergent and the faint cologne both of them still wore.“You didn’t think we’d wait the whole visit,” Daniel said under his breath.Marcus’s hands were already under the back of my dress, sliding up bare t
****Lily’s POV**They started arriving just after noon.First came the black SUV with Uncle Frank behind the wheel and Aunt Clara in the passenger seat, spine straight, expression already judgmental. Rachel climbed out of the back with a small suitcase and the same sharp eyes that had almost caught me weeks earlier. Mom greeted them on the front steps with the warm hostess smile she used for every family gathering. I stood slightly behind her, scarf unnecessary now that we were home, and felt the old tension slide straight back under my skin.Frank’s gaze found me over Mom’s shoulder and held for half a second too long before he looked away and accepted the welcome hug. Clara’s embrace for me was brief and cool.“You look… settled,” she said.“I am.”Rachel simply nodded once, already scanning the house like she expected to find evidence of everything she suspected.The next cars brought the rest.Uncle Leo and Uncle Martins arrived together, quiet and heavy in the way I remembered.







