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CHAPTER FIFTY NINE
publish date:
2026-06-26 21:49:45
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CORRUPT ME (GIVING MY INNOCENCE TO MY BROTHER'S BESTFRIEND) CHAPTER FIFTY NINE
"The most dangerous place a person can live is inside someone else's mind. Because no one can follow them there to get them out."ZYRANHe was home.I'd known he would be. Nikolai's surveillance had established his patterns with the kind of precision that came from ten days of careful, patient observation, and Tuesday evenings Jeremy Torrence spent at his apartment. Alone. Consistent as clockwork, which was the particular irony of men who believed themselves untouchable — they stopped varying their routines because they'd stopped believing their routines needed protecting.The building was exactly as described. Midtown, mid-range, the kind of place that suggested comfortable rather than wealthy. A single camera at the entrance that I walked past without concern because I'd had Marcus loop the feed twenty minutes ago. A doorman who was currently on a break that would last exactly as long as I needed it to.I took the stairs.Fourth floor. Apartment 4C. I stood outside the door for a mo
CORRUPT ME (GIVING MY INNOCENCE TO MY BROTHER'S BESTFRIEND) CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT
"There is a particular kind of man who looks at something gentle and sees something to destroy. And there is a particular kind of consequence for that."ZYRANI stood in the kitchen for four minutes after she left.I know it was four minutes because I watched the clock on the wall without meaning to, my eyes fixing on it the way eyes fixed on things when the brain needed something simple and external to anchor itself to while it processed something it wasn't ready to process.Four minutes.Then I picked up my phone and called Nikolai."I need everything you have on Jeremy Torrence and self-harm," I said. "Specifically whether he knew. Whether he was aware of it during the relationship."A pause. "That's in the supplemental file. Section four. I flagged it but you hadn't asked about it specifically so I didn't push.""Send it now.""Already sending."I hung up and waited.The file arrived in three minutes. I opened it standing at the kitchen counter in the quiet house and read it the w
CORRUPT ME (GIVING MY INNOCENCE TO MY BROTHER'S BESTFRIEND) CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN
"The scars we hide the hardest are never the ones on our skin. They're the ones we made trying to survive the ones inside."MYRAI answered his question.Not the full answer. Not everything. But the truthful one, the one that lived in the part of me that had stopped being able to lie to him about the things that actually mattered."No," I said. "He never hit me."Zyran's shoulders dropped a fraction. Almost invisible. The specific release of someone who'd been bracing for one answer and received a different one."Not physically," I added quietly. "He was too careful for that. He understood that marks were evidence and he never wanted evidence."Zyran looked at me."What he did leave," I said, "was harder to see. That was the whole point."We were still in the kitchen, morning light coming through the windows, coffee going warm in my mug. It felt strange to be talking about this in such an ordinary setting. Like the conversation deserved a more significant location than a kitchen on a
CORRUPT ME (GIVING MY INNOCENCE TO MY BROTHER'S BESTFRIEND) CHAPTER FIFTY SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY SIX"The most terrifying thing about love is not feeling it. It's knowing that the person you feel it for never promised to stay."MYRAThe word was right there.Sitting in my chest, fully formed, completely certain, the way some things arrived without announcement and then refused to leave. I knew the answer to my brother's question. Had known it probably longer than tonight, longer than I'd been willing to look at it directly.But knowing something and saying it out loud were two completely different acts and I stood there in the noise of the event with Luca's face in front of me and my mouth wouldn't form the word.Because saying it made it real in a way I couldn't take back.And Zyran had never promised love.That was the thing I kept returning to, the specific thing that sat at the center of all of it like a stone I kept finding when I reached into the warmth of what we'd built. He'd said it clearly, early on, in that honest and devastating way he had of telling har
CORRUPT ME (GIVING MY INNOCENCE TO MY BROTHER'S BESTFRIEND) CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE
"The people who love you the most are sometimes the ones you have to fight the hardest to be seen by."MYRAI wasn't supposed to hear it.That was the thing I kept telling myself afterward, like it somehow changed what I'd heard. I'd gone looking for Zyran because he'd been gone from the main room for longer than made sense and I'd felt his absence the way I'd started feeling his absence — immediately and with a specific kind of awareness that I was still getting used to.I'd followed the route most likely to find him, which had taken me past the side corridor, and I'd heard voices before I reached the door.I'd stopped.I wasn't proud of it. I hadn't intended to eavesdrop on a private conversation between my husband and my brother. But the sound of both of them — quiet and tense in a way that meant something serious was happening — had frozen me on the other side of that door before I'd made a conscious decision about anything.I'd heard enough.Not all of it. Pieces. The specific pi
CORRUPT ME (GIVING MY INNOCENCE TO MY BROTHER'S BESTFRIEND) CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR
"The worst betrayals are the ones that come from the people who had your trust completely."ZYRANThe silence lasted about four seconds.Which doesn't sound like a long time. But four seconds of silence between two people who had known each other for over a decade, standing in the corner of a room full of noise while one of them waited for the other to deny something — four seconds was a long time.I didn't deny it.I'd thought about it in the half second between his question and now. Had run the calculation the way I ran every calculation — quickly, completely, looking at every available option and its consequences. I could redirect. Could give him something technically true that wasn't the full answer. Could buy time, create distance, handle this later in a better setting.But this was Luca.And I didn't lie to Luca. That had been true for eleven years and it was still true now even standing here with the specific look on his face that I was watching develop in real time."We should
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