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Home Isn't Where I Left It
publish date:
2025-07-11 17:07:19
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The Devil's Plaything A Happy Ever After
Epilogue – A Year and Three Months (Serena's POV) My daughter's first word was not Mama. It was not Dada either, which would have been ordinary and acceptable. It was Mona. She said it clearly and with great conviction on a Wednesday morning in November, pointing at Mona across the kitchen with the authority of someone identifying something important. Mona, who had survived nineteen years in the Devlin household without so much as a visible display of sentiment, had to leave the room. We heard, very faintly, a sound from the corridor that she would deny until her last day. Liam's first word was light. We don't entirely know why. He had been looking at the window when he said it and he seemed satisfied with himself afterward, which was Liam in a nutshell — considering things quietly and then announcing them with quiet finality. Lucian, when I told him, said: "He's right. Light was worth saying first." I thought that was the most Lucian thing he had ever said. — — — Ethan's gi
The Devil's Plaything The Night That Kept Giving
Serena's POVThe party was everything she had wanted it to be and then some.The media got hold of it somehow, the way the media always got hold of things involving Lucian, and by nine o'clock there were already posts spreading across the internet. Lucian Devlin, the devil himself, turns 38. The photographs were everywhere. The garden, the lights, the man himself standing with his wife and his twins and the particular expression on his face that was so different from the expression he wore in boardrooms and in photographs taken without his knowledge. He looked, Serena thought, like someone who had been given something he didn't know how to hold yet but was learning.She thought: good. Let them see it. Let everyone see it.Lucian spent the first hour being the version of himself that came out when he was genuinely happy and not trying to manage it, which was a version Serena loved unreservedly. He was warm and dry and made the kind of quiet remarks to Marcus that had Marcus nearly chok
The Devil's Plaything Come Home
Serena's POVEverything was ready.The house had been transformed over the course of the morning while Lucian was in the air, and watching it happen had been one of the most quietly joyful things Serena had ever been part of. Mona had been up since five. Kael had arrived at seven with two of his people and a van full of things that needed setting up. Marcus had shown up at eight-thirty with Marissa and immediately taken charge of the garden lights in the way of a man who had strong opinions about lighting and was not embarrassed about it.Lex had handled the logistics with his usual calm efficiency, which Serena had come to rely on completely, coordinating the catering and the florist and the small matter of making sure Lucian's jet landed without anyone tipping him off.Chloe had been there since the night before.She had arrived with overnight things and the bright, barely-contained energy of someone who was very excited and working hard not to show it, and she had been indispensabl
The Devil's Plaything The Day He Hated Most
Lucian's POVI have never celebrated my birthday.Not since I was eight years old. Not once in thirty years.People who didn't know the full story sometimes found that strange. A man with the kind of money I had, the kind of life I had built, and he didn't throw a birthday dinner? Not even a quiet one? They would say it with that particular smile people use when they think you're being unnecessarily difficult about something simple.They didn't know what happened on my birthday thirty years ago.I was eight the last time a birthday felt like something worth celebrating. My mother had made a cake. A real one, not one she had ordered from somewhere, one she had made herself with her sleeves rolled up and flour on her forearms and Liam on the kitchen stool watching her with his big serious eyes, asking questions about every single step. Liam was five and curious about everything in that exhausting and wonderful way that five-year-olds are. He wanted to know why the eggs had to be at room
The Devil's Plaything What Remained
Lucian's POVThe work was simple. Unhurried. There was nothing asked of me except to be there and use my hands.The soil was dark and smelled of rain from two days before. The rose was small and unimpressive and would not bloom until spring at the earliest, maybe longer. And I found, to my own quiet surprise, that I was completely fine with that. I had become, in ways I had not planned or predicted, a patient man. The evidence of this still caught me off guard sometimes.Lucille came over and put both small hands directly into the dirt.She did it with the total commitment she brought to everything physical. No hesitation, no testing the water first. Both hands, right to the wrist, completely buried. She looked up at us with an expression of pure satisfaction.Serena laughed. Open, unguarded, the kind of laugh she had when something delighted her before she had time to think about it.I reached for my phone and took the photograph.Because there are things worth keeping. And I had lea
The Devil's Plaything A Sunday In October
Lucian's POVThere were things I had not known about myself before Serena Vale.I had not known, for instance, that I was capable of sitting in a garden on a Sunday morning doing absolutely nothing, and actually being okay with it. For forty-one years I had treated stillness like a problem that needed fixing. Movement was the only thing I trusted. If I stopped moving, I was exposed. If I went quiet, I was left alone with myself in ways I had decided, somewhere in the long cold stretch of early adulthood, were not useful to anyone, least of all me.And yet here I was.Sitting in the garden.Doing nothing.The morning was the kind of October morning that belongs only to itself. The light was thin and gold and almost apologetic about how beautiful it was. The air carried the faint smell of turned earth and something woody drifting from the far end of the property, where the old oaks had begun letting their leaves go. There was a cup of coffee on the arm of my chair that had been growing
The Devil's Plaything My Only Weakness
Lucian’s POVSchool has always been noise and nothing more. Laughs that didn’t amuse me. I never saw the point of attending—teachers only pretended to educate us, the students only pretended to learn. With my last name, passes and prestige came without attendance.But everything changed the day I g
The Devil's Plaything Love In Chains
Chapter 31 – Love in Chains(Beverley’s POV)The Devlin mansion was a palace carved out of ice.Marble stretched endlessly, chandeliers glittered like frozen stars, and portraits of dead Devlins glared from the walls as though warning me I didn’t belong. The staff moved like shadows, silent and obe
The Devil's Plaything The Engagement Party
Chapter 30 –The Engagement PartyFlashback Continued(Beverley’s POV)The ballroom glowed like a golden cage.Crystal chandeliers dripped light across polished marble, violins sang a delicate waltz, and everywhere I looked, the world’s richest smiled their poisonous smiles. Waiters floated with cha
The Devil's Plaything Even The Devil Gets Jealous
Chapter 7: Even The Devil Gets JealousMarcus POVThe lights in the bar were dim, the kind of place where secrets were currency and silence was comfort. I sat at the farthest corner, a glass of bourbon untouched in front of me. My emerald eyes—those same piercing, unforgettable eyes, stared into no
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