Mag-log inBy the time Nora wakes up the next day, David has already left. He barely got any sleep, tossing and turning over everything that happened in the last fourty-eight hours.
Kissing his secretary, kissing his submissive. The two things that he should never have done, and he did them both in the same fucking day.Nora, he understands why he’s did it. But at The Red Room… he can’t place the reason. He can’t quite put it into words yet. Something in his body acted before his brain could sto“I’m not sure what secret you’re referring to,” he says, and his voice is perfectly even, perfectly neutral, perfectly nothing, which is how I know immediately that he knows exactly what secret I’m referring to. “You know,” I say pleasantly. “Lucia–” “You know, and I know you know, and we can spend the next ten minutes doing this particular dance or you can accept that I found what I found and we can move on to the part where you agree to my terms.” I hold his gaze from the edge of his bed and I watch him think, running through the variables and I wait, because I have been waiting for him to come home for the better part of the day and a few more seconds costs me nothing. Finally, something in his face shifts and he exhales through his nose and says, “What exactly did you find?” “Enough,” I say simply. He is quiet for a long moment. The afternoon light sits between us and neither of us moves and I can hear the house e
Elias's POV Eli drives the way he thinks, which is fast and without wasted movement. He texted Marcus, arranged the afternoon off, and drove across the city in the grey morning light with the conversation he was about to have already assembled in his head. He parks outside his mother’s building and sits in the car for exactly four seconds before he gets out. He takes the stairs. The lift is too slow and he needs the climb right now, needs something to do with the energy that is moving through him because if he arrives at that door without burning any of it off, he is going to end up in a prison cell. He already knows Carver is here. He knew it before he started the drive because Carver has been treating his mother’s kitchen like an annex of his own operation for the last month since he found out about David Reid and Eli has been allowing it because it kept his mother feeling connected to something larger than her own four walls, and that, he is realizing now, was a calcul
“I thought,” a low rough voice murmurs right against my ear, “I told you to stay put.”The wave of relief that crashes through me at the sound of Eli’s voice is so intense that my knees actually buckle. I turn in his arms and throw mine around his neck, holding on tighter than I probably should.“I was about five seconds away from coming back for you.” I murmur into his chest, still feeling my body shaking. “I heard the shots and then nothing. I thought… I thought…”“I know,” he says quietly, placing a hand at the small of my back and pulling me closer. “I’m okay. We’re okay.”We stay like that for a long moment, just breathing, the adrenaline still surging through both of us. When we finally pull apart, our faces are only inches away. His eyes search mine in the dim light filtering through the trees, and I can feel my pulse still racing, though now for an entirely different reason.“I thought I’d never see you again,” I whisper, feeling my body relax into
The world comes back in pieces. My head throbs like someone is hammering nails into my skull from the inside. Metal groans around me and the sharp smell of burnt rubber and gasoline fills my nose. I blink hard, trying to make sense of the upside-down angle of the streetlights filtering through the cracked windshield. The car is on its side but I am still strapped in, my body hanging awkwardly against the seatbelt with one leg pinned beneath something heavy.Eli’s voice cuts through the haze. “Lucia. Lucia, stay with me. Open your eyes.”I turn my head toward the sound and find him half inside the driver’s side, which is now above us, his face tight with focus as he works at the crumpled metal near my legs. Blood trickles from a cut on his forehead, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. His hands move fast, prying at the dashboard that has shifted inward and trapped my left leg.“Eli,” I manage in a dry voice. “What happened?”“Another car slammed into us. We need to get you out q
The street market is a world I did not know existed and I’m annoyed at myself for not knowing it existed because it’s truly extraordinary.It runs two full blocks, dense and colorful and loud in the way that is interesting rather than overwhelming, with stalls selling everything from secondhand books to handmade jewelry to food that smells so good I make an actual involuntary sound when we walk past one particular corner. Eli buys me something fried and wrapped in paper from a stall run by an old man who Eli calls tiger for some reason. “How does he know you?” I ask, unwrapping the paper, and whatever is inside is so good I immediately stop forming other thoughts.“I’ve been coming here since I was twelve,” Eli says, in the easy way he talks about his neighborhood, matter-of-fact and without the self-consciousness that comes from people who mistake simplicity for something to be embarrassed about.I ask him things and he answers them, he doesn’t seem to get tire
My father delivers the news the way he delivers all news he knows I won’t like, which is calmly, over breakfast, while my mother does the thing where she’s very interested in her orange juice.“This year’s birthday will be a family dinner,” he says in the tone that is not a discussion opener. “Given recent events, a large gathering is too much of a security risk.”I put my fork down. I pick it up again. I put it down. “It’s my eighteenth birthday,” I say.“Yes.”“My eighteenth.”“I heard you the first time, Lucia.”“Dad.” I say his name with every ounce of reasonable, measured maturity I have ever possessed, which is being assembled from scratch in real time. “I have been planning this since I was fifteen. The dress is bought. The venue deposit is paid. The invitations went out three weeks ago.”“We’ll cover the deposit,” he says, and turns a page of his newspaper.“It’s not about the deposit!”“Language,” he says mildly, to the newspaper.“I didn’t say anything.”“You were about to.”
We’re officially at 20k views, guyssss 😭 I know this might not seem like a huge milestone to some of you who are used to reading books with 100k, 500k, or even millions of views, but for me?? For the fact that this is my very first book ever??? Speechless. I was surprised when this book even got
I stare into the empty space where the ledger should be, my pulse loud in my ears, each beat reminding me how quickly everything we built to protect ourselves has crumbled. David exhales sharply beside me, the sound cutting through the silence. “Someone knew exactly where to look.” I don’t answer
I grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turn white as I speed through the city streets, David in the passenger seat beside me. "Turn left at the next light," he says quietly, glancing at his phone's GPS. "It'll shave off a few minutes." I nod without speaking and make the turn, the hospital
Vincent is still asleep beside me when I slip out of bed at six the next morning. Lucy is curled against his chest, her small hand fisted in his T-shirt, breathing slow and even. The sight of them together usually steadies me. This morning it only makes the knot in my stomach tighten.







