LOGINKISAREL.Something about it kept snagging at the back of my mind and refusing to let go, no matter how many times I told myself I was overthinking it. The way I had fallen asleep — so suddenly, so completely, like someone had reached into my head and switched everything off at once. I was tired, yes. The weekend had been a lot, and I had barely slept, and my body had every reason to give out on me.But it hadn't felt like tiredness.It had felt like something else. Something heavier and faster than exhaustion, something that had taken me under without even letting me decide if I was sleepy or not.I trusted Jace. Whatever he had done — whatever he was still doing — I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't drug me. To what end? What would be the point?To have sex with me? I gave him that willingly. All he had to do was ask. And, not that we even had sex that night. Because I checked when I woke up.To make me sleep over? That wasn't enough reason to drug me.In fact, the thought alo
OCEANS.The second I landed in Sydney, I dialed Reeves."What have you found?" I asked, taking long strides toward the cars waiting on the tarmac."Nothing yet, sir." He sounded the exact way he always did when the news was bad, and he was managing how he delivered it. "Mr. Gerald had no CCTV in his house. The property a few yards away recorded nothing useful either."Fuck.I loosened my tie like it was suffocating me. The Sydney air was warm and open, and it still felt like the walls were closing.Whoever this was, they were thorough. Disturbingly thorough. The kind of thoroughness that didn't happen by accident or improvisation — it was practiced. The work of someone who had been doing this long enough to know exactly what to remove and what to leave behind. And they were taking it to a whole new level."No trace of violence on the body," Reeves continued. "No foreign substance found. The doctors are leaning toward—""Fuck what the doctors are leaning toward." I cut him off, keeping
KISAREL.My eyes slowly peeled open like a heavy lead was placed on them.I winced at the sharp pain I felt in my head, and when my hand flew to the side of my head where it hurt, I felt warm liquid trickling down there."Jesus..." I sat up immediately, the entire room spinning in my blurry eyes.I took in the sight around me, and I was in my room. Not in the hospital. But in my room, lying down in the very mess Moon had made.My clothes were thrown out of the closet, my safe emptied, and turned upside down with its contents all gone.“Oh, God.” The words slipped out of me as I dropped to my knees in front of it, my fingers trembling as I grabbed it and flipped it over, like maybe—maybe I had missed something. Maybe something had gotten stuck inside. Maybe...I refused to accept the fact that everything I had kept hidden in there was all gone. But they were all gone.Tears blurred my vision almost instantly, spilling over faster than I could wipe them away.I pressed the back of my ha
OCEANS.The flight was longer than necessary. Probably because I had nothing else to do but sit with my eyes buried in my system, going over data upon data, files upon files, while surrounded by a bunch of boring men who couldn't even crack a decent joke amongst themselves.Not that I wanted jokes. I wanted silence. Complete, total, uninterrupted silence that had absolutely nothing living inside it.What the fuck is funny? I lifted my head slowly, irritation already coiling tight in my chest. And why was Tim laughing like someone had just told the greatest joke in human history, and he had just discovered humor for the first time in his life?"Keep it down!" I snapped at them.I left my private cabin because it suddenly felt too tight and suffocating, with unwelcoming images clouding my head so much so that it felt like I was being haunted.And out here, it still didn't feel better.Every noise quieted down immediately.Good.I didn't need the noise. I didn't need anything from anyone
KISAREL."Well, well, well..." She stepped in slowly and easily, her eyes pinned to the box on the floor. "What do we have here?"I clutched the photograph tighter, knowing that one wrong move and everything I'd been protecting for years would be gone in a few seconds.Her interest seemed pinned to the contents of the box without her even looking my way.She crouched in front of me, and the first thing she picked up was the knitted socks.She held them up, turning them over in her fingers with the expression of someone handling something they found vaguely offensive. "What on earth—" She laughed. "Your parents died, and this is all you get from them. A pair of cheap, misshapen socks? That’s almost impressive."She dangled them from two fingers like they were something she'd found on the street. "No wonder you turned out like this. They didn’t even think you were worth leaving something real behind."She flung them sideways."Stop it!" I scrambled after them, snatching them off the flo
KISAREL.The plan was to get home, dump these bags in my room, and hurry over to Elgin's immediately. But nothing prepared me for what I walked into the moment I alighted from the taxi.There were men everywhere.Four, five, six of them moving in and out of the front door, carrying things. Large things. The kind of things that don't move unless someone decides they are going to move.I stood at the gate and watched a man I didn't recognize carry my father's armchair through the front door, and I felt something happen in my chest that wasn't healthy.My father's armchair.The wide, dark brown one that had sat in the corner of the living room for as long as I could remember. It had a worn patch on the right armrest where he used to rest his hand when he was reading. I could still remember the small gouge in the wood on the left leg, which came from the time I had dragged it across the floor at age seven because I wanted to sit closer to the television, and my mother had scolded me for i







