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2026-04-19 19:09:26
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Tempted by my brother-in-law. DINNER
Chapter 114DINNERPOV: HazelThe estate was lit from every window when we pulled through the gate.I noticed that first. The specific quality of a house that had people in it who were actually present rather than occupying separate rooms at a careful distance. Every window. Even the ones that were usually dark.We went inside.The noise hit immediately.Not loud exactly. But the layered sound of multiple conversations happening in proximity, which was something I had not heard in this house in all the months I had been in it. It had always been a house of careful silences and managed distances and now it sounded like something else entirely.I followed it to the dining room.My mother had expanded dinner to the large table.The one that had been set for two when Kaden had tried to have a careful conversation with me about things he was not ready to say directly. The one that seated twelve and had been used for formal family occasions and had never felt like a room where people actual
Tempted by my brother-in-law. FOURTH
FOURTHPOV: HazelShe had a letter.Not documentation. Not field notes. Not financial records.A letter.Written by Margaret to the Varyn family, addressed not to any specific person but to the family as a whole, given to a woman named Elsa who had been Margaret's neighbour in the city before the mountain, who was now eighty seven years old and had kept it in a box in her flat for sixty years because Margaret had said keep this until someone comes looking and Elsa had kept it because she was the kind of person who did what she said she would do.Nikolai asked her to stay where she was.He asked for her address and she gave it and he said we are two hours out and she said she would be awake, she did not sleep much anymore, age had that effect.We drove.The city came back toward us out of the dark and Nikolai drove and I sat beside him and thought about what a letter to the family meant. Not to him specifically. Not to Kaden or Vera or Arthur. To the family. The whole structure of it.
Tempted by my brother-in-law. COORDINATES
Chapter 112COORDINATESPOV: HazelWe left at four.Not first light. Not after dinner. Four in the afternoon with the coordinates on Nikolai's phone and three hours of daylight left and the mountain two hours out of the city.Kaden said he would handle dinner. He said our father could wait one evening, that he was not going anywhere, that the mountain had waited forty years and was apparently still waiting and we should go before the light went.I kissed my mother on the cheek on the way out.She handed me a jacket."It is cold up there," she said."I have a jacket," I said."That one is warmer," she said.I took hers.Nikolai drove fast without being reckless, the way he did everything, and the city fell away behind us and the roads opened and the mountain appeared on the horizon the way it always appeared, large and indifferent and entirely itself.We did not talk much.That was the thing about us on long drives. We had learned early that silence between us did not need filling and
Tempted by my brother-in-law. ARRIVALS
Chapter 111ARRIVALSPOV: NikolaiWe got to the airport in twenty minutes.Kaden had texted the terminal and the specific arrivals area and I drove and Hazel sat beside me and neither of us said much because there was not much that needed saying. My father was in a building twenty minutes away after ten years of being in a building four hours away and the gap between those two things was not something conversation could bridge before we got there.We parked and went inside.The arrivals hall was the specific organised chaos of a Friday afternoon, people with signs and people without signs, families in clusters, the particular energy of a space designed entirely around the moment of someone coming back.Kaden was near the barrier.He was standing very still in the way he stood when he was holding something significant and needed his body not to show it. He saw us and raised his hand slightly.We went to him.He looked at me."He is just through there," he said. "He collected his bag. H
Tempted by my brother-in-law. GIFT
Chapter 110GIFTPOV: NikolaiWe drove back to the estate without finishing the formalities with the agent.She had looked confused when I explained, briefly, that the purchase was being handled differently than expected, and had said she would follow up once the transfer details came through from Edinburgh, and we had thanked her and left and gotten in the car and Hazel had not said much on the way back because there was not much that fit into words yet.Fifteen years.Vera had bought the house fifteen years ago.She had been holding it that long, paying whatever it cost to maintain an empty house on a ridge, waiting for a reason to give it to someone, and she had found that reason in us without either of us knowing the house existed until this morning.We found her in the garden.Not the library. The garden, standing near the bench in the late morning light, looking at the roses that were apparently early this year, the same conversation she had had with Hazel on a different morning
Tempted by my brother-in-law. TOMORROW
TOMORROWPOV: HazelKaden's voice on the speaker was steady.Steady in the way it was when he had already done the work of processing something and was on the other side of it by the time he called. He had probably been sitting with it since his father called him and he had probably gone very quiet and very internal and had come out the other side and picked up the phone."Tomorrow," Nikolai said."Yes," Kaden said. "He lands at eleven in the morning.""Does he need somewhere to stay," Nikolai said."I told him he could stay at the estate," Kaden said. "He said no. He said he would find somewhere near the city. I did not push.""Good," Nikolai said."I am going to meet him at the airport," Kaden said. "Alone. The way I said I wanted to.""Yes," Nikolai said."And then," Kaden said. "Whatever after that looks like.""Yes," Nikolai said.A pause."Are you alright," Nikolai said."I have been asking myself that all morning," Kaden said. "I keep arriving at the same answer.""Which is," N
Tempted by my brother-in-law. TURN
Chapter 108TURNPOV: NikolaiSable had said the name clearly.He had said it and I had heard it and I had asked him to say it again and he had said it again and the second time landed differently from the first, the way things did when the mind needed to hear something twice before it let it be re
Tempted by my brother-in-law. NAMED
NAMEDPOV: HazelWe went back inside.Vera was still in her chair.She looked up when we came back through the door and did not look surprised to see us which was confirmation enough before I said a word.I sat down.Nikolai stood near the door."The journalist," I said. "James Holt.""Yes," she sa
Tempted by my brother-in-law. VERA
Chapter 106VERAPOV: HazelShe was in her chair.Of course she was.Tea on the table, fire going even though it was morning, the book face down the way it was when she was waiting for something rather than reading. She looked up when we came in and her eyes went to the folder in my hands and then
Tempted by my brother-in-law. FLIGHT
FLIGHTPOV: NikolaiI told Kaden at the counter while my mother was making eggs.Not dramatically. Just set my coffee down and said our father is booking a flight and he is coming next week and watched Kaden's face do the thing it did when something large arrived and he was deciding where to put it
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