LOGINShare
GONE
publish date:
2026-04-25 22:28:49
Latest chapter
Tempted by my brother-in-law. GENEVA
Chapter 117GENEVAPOV: HazelHer name was Dr Claire Osei.She was fifty three and she had flown overnight from Geneva with two clinic directors and a folder of twenty years of research and she was sitting in the estate library at eleven in the morning with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting to be in exactly this room and was not going to waste the time now that she was in it.She looked at the folder of Margaret's documentation on the table.She had not touched it yet.She was looking at it the way you looked at something you had been approaching from a long way away."Rajan Anand told me about a compound," she said. "In a conference in nineteen ninety four. He was already ill by then and he knew it and he was trying to get the information out before he could not." She looked at her hands. "He said he had found something on a mountain with a colleague who was no longer alive. He said the colleague had found the secondary application first and had documented it but th
Tempted by my brother-in-law. EGGS
EGGSPOV: NikolaiMy father had opinions about eggs.This was the first thing I learned about him in a domestic context and it was both completely surprising and immediately recognisable in the way things were when you had been away from someone long enough that their specific qualities became new information even though they had always been there.He believed eggs should be cooked slowly.Lena believed they should be cooked at the right heat which was not low.They were standing on opposite sides of this question at the kitchen counter when Hazel and I came in and the specific quality of the disagreement was one I recognised from the workshop, the unhurried certainty of a man who was used to doing things at his own pace, except that Lena was also unhurried and also certain and neither of them was going to be moved.I stood in the doorway.Hazel stood beside me."He has been like this since six thirty," she said quietly."What time did he arrive," I said."Six fifteen," she said."He
Tempted by my brother-in-law. RIDGE
Chapter 115RIDGEPOV: HazelWe went the next morning.Just us, the way Nikolai had said. No investigators, no family, no calls unless something was urgent enough to justify breaking the agreement we had made at the dinner table without saying it out loud.The city was doing its Saturday morning thing when we drove through it, slower than weekdays, the streets having a different quality of purpose, and the ridge road took us up and out of the density of it into the part of the city that was not quite city anymore.The house was at the end of the street the same way it had been yesterday.But yesterday we had gone there as buyers and today we went as the people it belonged to and that was a different kind of arriving.Nikolai had the key.Vera had given it to him last night before we left, produced it from her cardigan pocket as if she had been carrying it for some time, which she probably had, and handed it to him without ceremony and gone back to her chair.He unlocked the front door
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. NINE
NINE POV: Hazel The meeting room was on the ground floor. Large table. Eight chairs. A window that looked out onto the front drive so you could see cars arriving, which I had always thought was a design choice that said something about the family that lived here. Always watching who was coming
Tempted by my brother-in-law. SIXTEEN
SIXTEEN POV: Nikolai We moved through the back corridor fast. Hazel was ahead of me and I let her lead because she knew this house better than I did in the ways that mattered, the staff patterns, the rooms that were used at this hour, the doors that stuck and the ones that opened silently. She
Tempted by my brother-in-law. LENA
LENA POV: Hazel My mother's voice was the same. Eleven years and it was the same. The specific cadence of it, the way she clipped the end of certain words, the slight pause before she said something important. I had forgotten I remembered it so well until I heard it and then it was like someth
Tempted by my brother-in-law. LEVERAGE
LEVERAGE POV: Hazel I found out at seven fifteen. Nikolai knocked on my door and I opened it and looked at his face and knew before he said anything that whatever he had gotten from Kaden's room was not small. He came inside. I closed the door. We stood in the middle of my room the way we had st
You may also like
Bound to the CEO
wandering jedi695.9K viewsOne night with Ex-Husband
Anjaani542.3K viewsForceful Marriage: Young Master's Mute Wife
A Lake’s Depth1.2M viewsWanted: Billionaire's Wife And Their Genius Twin Babies
Pamela978.3K viewsDancing On Ice: One-Night Stand With The Hockey Captain
King Ammisha36 viewsOpen Marriage; Claimed By My Father In Law And His Best Frid
Lizza.O91 viewsThe Husband Who Wakes Up Loving Me (English)
Senyorita95 viewsSold to the Beast: The Billionaire’s Forced Bride
Golden Queen93 views
