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CRACKERS

Author: Loe_ells
last update publish date: 2026-05-06 17:48:54

CRACKERS

POV: Hazel

I stood in the doorway for a moment.

My mother was behind me and Nikolai was on the phone and the dining room was ahead of me and Celeste was somewhere in this house, probably still at the table, probably still talking to someone the way she always talked to people, warm and present and entirely convincing.

"When did she do it," I said into the phone.

"Mara thinks the piece was filed two days ago," Nikolai said. "Before the meeting. Before any of yesterday."

Two days ago.

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  • 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.He was quiet for a moment.Iris handed him a book.He took it automatically and looked at it and then looked at me."Next week," he said."Yes," I said."He called Hazel," he said."My hands were full," I said.He looked at the book in his hand.It was a cookbook. Iris had very specific taste in what she redistributed around the kitchen."What did Isabella say to him," Kaden said.I told him.He listened and when I finished he looked at the counter and was quiet for long enough that the eggs were done and my mother had put plates in front of both of us and Hazel had sat down and Iris had abandoned the books in favour of trying to reach the edge of the table before he spoke."She tried once

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    LAST

    LASTPOV: HazelThe last page was different from the others.Not in the handwriting. That was the same, Margaret's slightly rushed script, the handwriting of someone always getting something down before the thought moved on. But the content was different. The pages before it were technical, dense with observation and measurement and the specific language of someone documenting a compound with precision. The last page was not technical at all.It was a letter.Not addressed to anyone specific.Just a letter, written in the same notebook, on the last page, and when I turned to it I understood immediately that it was not part of the research documentation.It was something she had written for herself.Or for whoever came after.I had read it twice before I messaged Nikolai.He came in with Kaden behind him and I looked at the two of them standing in the library doorway and held up the page.Nikolai sat down.I handed it to him.He read it.Kaden read it over his shoulder.The library was

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    ISABELLA

    ISABELLAPOV: NikolaiKaden came down the stairs.He took his phone from Celeste and looked at the screen and then looked at me with the expression he had when he was deciding something fast and needed the decision to be right."She knows he is alive," he said."The investigators told her yesterday," I said. "When she confessed.""She has had twelve hours with it," he said."Yes," I said."And now she wants to speak to him directly," he said."That is what she is asking for," I said.He looked at the phone."He is not here," I said. "He is in Lisbon. I have not called him yet this morning.""She does not know that," Kaden said."No," I said.He held the phone and I watched him do the thing he did when he was working through the layers of something, the specific focused quiet of a man who had been managing complicated situations since before he should have had to."I need to call him first," I said. "Before she speaks to him. He needs to know she is asking and he needs to decide if he

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    LANDING

    LANDINGPOV: HazelI woke up when the wheels hit the runway.The specific jolt of it and then the sound of deceleration and the city lights moving past the window and Nikolai beside me already awake, which meant he had been awake the whole flight, which I had expected.I looked at him.He showed me his phone.I read Kaden's message.I read it twice.Isabella had confessed. Fully. On the record. Including what she had done to Mikhail.I looked at the window.The city was outside doing its late night thing, the specific glow of it from the ground, and we were back and the air was different from Lisbon, colder, the city's particular quality of cold that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the density of things happening in it."Mikhail," I said."Yes," Nikolai said."He does not know yet," I said."No," he said."You need to call him," I said."Yes," he said."Not tonight," I said. "It is late and it is a significant thing to receive by phone at this hour."He lo

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    KEEPER

    KEEPERPOV: NikolaiI answered.Dr Anand's voice came through clear and direct the way it always did, the voice of a woman who did not waste time on preamble when she had something to say."I found something," she said. "In my father's papers. I have been going through them since we spoke yesterday and I found something I did not know existed.""Tell me," I said."A package," she said. "Wrapped in oilcloth the way you wrapped things to protect them from mountain weather. My mother kept it with his research notes. She did not know what it was. She said he brought it home three weeks before he died and put it with his papers and told her it was important and that she should keep it safe."The room was very quiet.The old man by the window was watching me.Hazel was very still."What is in it," I said."Documentation," she said. "Field notes. In a handwriting I did not recognise until I compared it to the photograph of Margaret that was in the news." She paused. "It is Margaret's handwri

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    SOFIA

    Chapter 100SOFIAPOV: HazelI sat up properly.Nikolai was already sitting beside me and I held the phone between us so he could hear and Sofia's voice came through small and careful in the dark hotel room."Sixty years," I said. "He was there when Margaret died.""He was nineteen," she said. "He was a local guide. He knew the mountain and the researchers hired him sometimes to help with equipment and navigation." A pause. "He has been in this area his whole life. He is eighty now.""Why is he calling now," I said. "Why tonight.""He reads the papers," she said. "He has been reading about the investigation and the foundation and Margaret's name being attached to it. He saw the photograph." Another pause. "He said when he saw her photograph in the news he understood the time had come."I looked at Nikolai.His face was still and focused in the specific way it was when he was listening to something he needed to hold carefully."What did he see," I said. "On the mountain.""He will not

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