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EDWARD

Auteur: Loe_ells
last update Date de publication: 2026-05-16 22:17:05

EDWARD

POV: Nikolai

He was standing at the gate.

Not in a car. On foot, which meant he had walked from wherever he was staying or gotten out of a car and sent it away, and he was standing at the estate gate in the early morning with a bag over one shoulder and the patient quality of a man who had been waiting for something for two years and could manage another ten minutes.

I went down to meet him.

Hazel came with me.

He was older than his voice had suggested on the phone. Mid seventies. Grey a
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  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    EDWARD

    EDWARDPOV: NikolaiHe was standing at the gate.Not in a car. On foot, which meant he had walked from wherever he was staying or gotten out of a car and sent it away, and he was standing at the estate gate in the early morning with a bag over one shoulder and the patient quality of a man who had been waiting for something for two years and could manage another ten minutes.I went down to meet him.Hazel came with me.He was older than his voice had suggested on the phone. Mid seventies. Grey and slight and with Elena's eyes in a face that had done a lot of living, the specific texture of a person who had been through the worst thing and had kept going not because they had recovered but because stopping was not something they knew how to do.He looked at me.I looked at him.Neither of us said anything for a moment and that was the right call because there was no version of hello that worked here and we both understood that.Then he held out his hand and I took it and he gripped it br

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    EMAIL

    EMAILPOV: HazelThe email was three paragraphs long.I read it once fast and then I handed the phone to Nikolai and watched his face while he read it because I needed to see it land in someone else before I decided what to do with it landing in me.He read it slowly.His face did not change in any dramatic way. It did the thing it did when something significant arrived, the particular quality of stillness that was not blankness, was the opposite of blankness, was a man receiving something with his full attention and not spilling any of it before he was ready.He read it twice.Then he put the phone down on the bed between us.The email had been sent from an account set up in Elena's name by a solicitor. Not the same solicitor as the letter. A different one. Based in the city. The email explained this in the first paragraph, that Elena had set up the account two months before she died and had written several emails and scheduled them to send at specific triggers. This one had been tri

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    RETRACTED

    RETRACTEDPOV: HazelI read the message twice and then I put the phone face down on the nightstand and looked at the ceiling.Nikolai was awake beside me. I could tell from the quality of his breathing, the specific change in it that happened when he was thinking rather than sleeping, and I did not ask how long he had been awake because it did not matter."He retracted it," I said."I know," he said. "I read it over your shoulder.""He made the claim this morning and retracted it tonight," I said. "In one day.""Something changed between this morning and tonight," he said."Yes," I said. "The question is what."I picked the phone back up and read Harris's message again. He says he has new information about why the arrangement was made. Not new information about the duress. New information about the arrangement itself. The distinction sat in my chest in a way I could not make comfortable."Kaden told the investigators this afternoon," I said. "That he was the one who brought my name fo

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    ONE

    ONEPOV: HazelShe closed the door behind me.Iris was asleep in the travel cot Kaden had produced from the same mysterious cupboard as the high chair, tucked in with her rabbit and her complete indifference to anything the adults in the room were carrying. I looked at her for a moment before I sat down because she was the easiest thing in the room to look at and I needed a second.My mother sat on the edge of the bed.I sat in the chair across from her.The room was small and warm and had the quality of a space that had been briefly inhabited by someone who knew how to make anywhere feel like somewhere. She had put things on the surfaces. A book. A glass of water. Iris's extra blanket folded on the chair before I moved it. Small domestic anchors the way she had always made them.I waited.She looked at her hands."When I was working for Vera," she said, "I was not just in the records office. She brought me into other parts of the house. Gave me work that was more complex. I was good

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    ELEVEN

    ELEVENPOV: HazelI pulled over again.Nikolai did not say anything. He had stopped commenting on the pulling over. It was becoming a pattern on this particular stretch of road and we both understood why.The solicitor waited."She contributed to the account for eleven years," I said."Yes," the solicitor said. "The first contribution was made fourteen days after your mother's departure from Sky Shade City. Every year after that on the same date. Consistent amounts, increasing incrementally, never missing a year.""Without my mother knowing," I said."Your mother knew," she said. "She was informed of each contribution through a separate channel. She did not refuse them."I looked at the dashboard.My mother had known Vera was contributing. She had sat across from me in this car and on that restaurant table and in Vera's library and she had not said it. She had let me find out from a solicitor in Edinburgh on a mountain road at seven in the evening."Was there a message attached to the

  • Tempted by my brother-in-law.    KADEN

    KADENPOV: HazelI stood up.Not a decision. Just what my body did when it needed to think and sitting felt like accepting something before I understood it.Nikolai looked at me.I held the phone tighter."Say that again," I said."I was the one who brought your name to the table," Kaden said. "When the family was discussing the arrangement. Isabella had a list. Scott had suggestions. I had been watching you for two months before any of it was formalised.""Watching me," I said."You were working at the records office on the east side," he said. "The building the Varyn Group used for document storage. You came in twice a week. You were thorough and you were quiet and you did not treat the work like it was beneath you and you did not try to make yourself visible to anyone who passed through." He paused. "You were the opposite of everyone else in every room I walked into."I looked at the valley."You chose me," I said."I brought your name forward," he said. "I want to be precise about

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