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The Ridge

Author: Juno Sparks
last update publish date: 2026-06-29 07:46:24

Georgia's POV

He showed me the estate in pieces, as though it were a story being told one chapter at a time.

The walled kitchen garden first, where things grew with the productive disorder of a space that had been tended for generations, the soil dark and rich and entirely itself. Then the stables, empty now but still smelling of their original purpose, the specific warm animal scent of a past that had not fully departed. The chapel at the estate's eastern edge, small and stone and older than t
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  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   The Pantry 2.0

    Dinner with Carlisle that night was an exercise in pretense. I smiled at his jokes, nodded at his plans for our future, raised my wine glass in toast to our happiness. All while the nail in my pocket pressed against my thigh, a small, sharp reminder that something wasn’t right. That nail was my reality check, my anchor to the truth I couldn’t quite grasp. “You seem distracted,” he said during dessert, his fork poised over chocolate cake neither of us had touched. The cake sat between us like a dark island, untouched and accusatory. “Wedding details,” I replied automatically. My go-to excuse, wearing thin with overuse. “Just want everything to be perfect.” Perfect was a word that tasted like ash in my mouth these days. He set down his fork with deliberate care, the tines perfectly aligned with the edge of his plate. Everything about Carlisle was precise—his movements, his speech, the way he arranged his life and now mine. Sometimes I wondered if he measured his breaths, counted his

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   The Pantry

    Adeline - I counted the hours like prisoners tap code on cell walls—forty-eight until I became Mrs. Carlisle Brocandale. The thought should have fizzed in my veins like champagne. Instead, it pooled in my gut like spoiled milk. Standing in the pantry doorway, I stared at the scattered cans of preserved peaches, thinking they resembled evidence at a crime scene. Yellow-orange fruit suspended in syrup, gleaming under the weak bulb like organs in formaldehyde. I hadn’t left them like this. Just like I hadn’t moved the stack of linens two days ago, or misplaced the sugar canister before that. Small things. Inconsequential disruptions that most people—sane people—would laugh off as wedding jitters making them absentminded. Maybe that’s all it was. I stepped into the pantry, my fingers trailing along the worn wooden shelves. This house—Carlisle’s ancestral home—had swallowed me whole the moment I moved in. Too big, too old, too full of shadows where unpleasant things could lurk. When Ca

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   SCRATCHING

    It was during one of my surveillance sessions that my hand began to scratch at the edge of the gap, almost mindlessly. The rough, splintered wood caught against the nail, and that’s when the idea took hold. Not even an idea—an instinct, primal and desperate. I began to scratch. At first, it was just nonsense—aimless gouges in the wood as my brain struggled to form coherent thought. But then came the letters. Words. Messages. For her. For Adeline. For anyone. HERE. I AM HERE. The nail bit into the wood, each letter a jagged scream. Splinters lodged under my nails. Blood smeared the grain like war paint. I wrote in rust and pain, a language only the desperate could decipher. The pain started as a dull throb in my wrist and arm, a warning I chose to ignore. When the nail slipped and gouged my finger, I barely paused. The relief of doing something overwhelmed the pain. Besides, pain had become a companion in this place—familiar, almost comforting. At least when I hurt, I knew I was s

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   THE GAP

    Georgia - The gap appeared on what might’ve been my ninety-third day. Or my hundredth. Time folds when you’re buried alive. I’d spent hours—days, perhaps—mapping every inch of this underground prison with my fingertips. The rough-hewn stone walls that scraped my knuckles raw. The dirt floor that drank my blood and tears with equal indifference. The low ceiling that seemed to press lower with each passing hour, threatening to collapse and finally end this nightmare. That’s when I found it. A sliver of existence between two wooden support beams where the cellar ceiling met the house above. Not much bigger than my spread fingers, but in the suffocating darkness, it might as well have been a doorway to heaven. I stood frozen beneath it, heart hammering against my ribs like something feral trying to escape. Light. Actual fucking light. Not the sickly yellow glow of the bare bulb Carlisle sometimes allowed me, but real, honest-to-God daylight. I needed to claw my way into that light—eve

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   Wedding Dress

    The day he found me in my wedding dress was different. I’d been pacing my cell for hours, the torn sheets trailing behind me like the ghost of a bridal train. My fingers kept adjusting the bodice, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from the skirt. In my head, I was walking down an aisle lined with peonies and baby’s breath. My father was beside me, his arm linked with mine. And at the end, waiting with that half-smile that always made my stomach flip—Carlisle. The real Carlisle’s arrival shattered the fantasy. He entered without knocking, the door swinging open with casual disregard for my privacy. I froze mid-step, suddenly aware of how I must look—a madwoman playing dress-up in shredded bedding. But instead of laughter or disgust, something else flickered across his face. Interest. Amusement. Maybe even a touch of the hunger I remembered from before. “Well,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Aren’t you... creative.” I straightened my shoulders, chin lifting. Some dormant part o

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   Sweet

    “She looks sweet,” I’d said aloud, my voice strange even to my own ears. “Innocent. Does she know you’ve got your ex fiancee locked up like a Penelopen madwoman while you play house with her?” I hadn’t meant to say it. The words had bubbled up from some deeper place, and when they left my mouth, I’d felt disconnected from them—like I was watching someone else speak through my lips. Carlisle’s face had darkened dangerously. “Careful, Georgia.” But I—or whoever was speaking through me—hadn’t been careful at all. “I wonder what she’d think if she knew. If she saw this room, saw what you’ve done. She looks like the type who believes in fairy tales. What happens when she realizes she’s fucking the villain?” His hand had connected with my face so fast I hadn’t seen it coming. My head had snapped back, vision bursting white, then red. And then... nothing. The pain burst bright, then dissolved into static. When the world reassembled, my lip was split, the photographs gone, and my mouth

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   The Family Curse

    Georgia's POVThere was one lesson my mother seemed determined I absorb before walking down the aisle. Not about love, or happiness, or even survival. Those were secondary concerns, the kind of things women like us were not supposed to want badly enough to name out loud. What mattered was understan

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   Centerpiece

    Georgia's POVThe wedding preparations began with the precision of a corporate acquisition.I watched my life being parceled into spreadsheets, my future traded like stocks. Each decision, florals, venue, guest list, meticulously arranged to maximize social return and not personal joy. My engagemen

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   The Weight of Him

    Georgia's POVThe first time I ever saw Josiah Mason, I felt his presence before I saw him. A pressure change in the atmosphere, like the moment before lightning strikes. At our summer gala, he materialized beside me as I stood alone by the fountain, nursing champagne and claustrophobia."Georgia S

  • The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance)   Engineered

    I wasn't raised. I was engineered.The Steele estate devoured my childhood whole, a mausoleum disguised as a home, built to crush rather than nurture. Its marble floors swallowed my footsteps. Its vaulted ceilings absorbed my screams. The chandeliers hung like frozen explosions of crystal, a silent

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