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Chapter 22: Fault Lines
publish date:
2026-01-28 22:36:03
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The Night Before Christmas Chapter 82: Another War
Aria’s POV“She’s been taken.”The words did not explode. They did not echo. They landed with terrifying precision and seemed to still the air inside my lungs.For a heartbeat, I genuinely thought I had misunderstood him.“Taken?” I repeated the syllables, scraping against my throat.The officer standing a few feet away did not look uncertain. He looked trained, composed in crisis, careful with language, but there was a strain beneath the professionalism.“Your daughter was collected from school this afternoon. The pickup was authorised.”The world tilted.“Authorised by who?” I demanded.He hesitated, just long enough for the dread to deepen, before replying.“By you, Miss Whitmore.”I stared at him.“That’s impossible,” I said slowly. “I’ve been here.”“We know,” he replied gently. “The authorisation was submitted digitally three days ago. It included your verified signature and facial confirmation.”Three days ago.Three days ago, I had still been untangling the fractures in my mem
The Night Before Christmas Chapter 81: The Basement Where I Broke, And Refused To Stay Broken
Aria’s POVThe basement did not feel like a room. It felt like a decision.Cold concrete beneath me. Damp air clinging to my lungs. A single bulb humming overhead, flickering just enough to remind me that even light could be unreliable.My wrists burned.The rope had been tied too tightly the first time. When I struggled, it tightened further. My shoulders ached from being forced behind me. My legs were bound at the ankles. I had counted the cracks in the wall three times. Counted the seconds between the guard’s footsteps. Counted my own breaths when panic threatened to swallow me whole.Time did not move here.It stretched.It mocked.The door opened.I didn’t look up immediately. I had learned that looking up too quickly gave him satisfaction.“Still stubborn?” Evans’ voice drifted down the steps.I lifted my head slowly.He looked composed. Almost cheerful.There was something cruel about cheerfulness in a place like this.“I have news,” he said, holding up his phone.I said nothin
The Night Before Christmas Chapter 80: The Fall
Desmond’s POVThere is a particular silence that comes before collapse.Not panic. Not shouting.Certainty.The kind a man carries when he believes he is untouchable. Evans Grant had been living inside that certainty for days.By the time the warrants were signed, I was already in position.The operation moved without spectacle. No media leaks. No dramatic confrontations. Just documentation, signatures, authorisation. Years of quiet evidence threaded together into something sharp enough to cut.Financial fraud. Illegal asset transfers. Coercion. Obstruction of justice.And beneath it all, conspiracy.Aviel’s shadow lingered, but today was not about her.Today was about leverage.And Aria.The police vehicles arrived at Evans’ building at 18:07.I watched from across the street, seated in the back of an unmarked car. James was beside me, earpiece in place, monitoring the coordination channel. Two plain-clothed officers entered first. Uniformed units followed seconds later.No sirens.J
The Night Before Christmas Chapter 79: The Husband Who Begins to Doubt
Third Person POVElliot Whitmore had always trusted his memory.It was one of the many things he prided himself on: sharp recall, precise detail, the ability to dismantle a conversation hours later and remember who shifted in their seat, who hesitated before answering. It had served him well in boardrooms and negotiations, where a single overlooked nuance could cost millions.But now it was failing him.He sat at his desk in his corner office, winter light filtering weakly through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The city below moved with its usual rhythm, traffic crawling, pedestrians braced against the cold — yet Elliot felt strangely detached from it all, as though separated by glass thicker than the panes before him.His laptop screen glowed.Unread emails.Pending approvals.A draft acquisition proposal awaiting his signature.He had not processed a single word in the past fifteen minutes.Instead, his mind replayed that morning.Helina lying in bed, watching him dress. The blanket
The Night Before Christmas Chapter 78: The Man Who Should Be Dead
Desmond’s POVI had already woken once after the surgery, too soon, too stubborn, dragged back from the brink by the single thought that refused to release me: Aria. The pain had followed later, not as a sharp intrusion but as a slow, crushing tide that rolled through my ribs and lungs, forcing the doctors to sedate me again, to press chemicals into my veins until the urgency dissolved into darkness. Even under sedation, her name had remained steady and insistent, threading through the fog like a compass I could not ignore.When I opened my eyes again, it was not pain that greeted me.It was silence.Not the ordinary hush of a hospital wing at night, but the dense, suspended quiet that settles over a battlefield after the first shot has been fired, when everyone waits to see who will fall. It pressed against my chest as though listening for weakness.The machines were still attached to me, their soft mechanical rhythms blinking in green and amber against dimmed lights, maintaining the
The Night Before Christmas Chapter 77: The Cage and the Lioness
Aria’s POVI walked the whole perimeter of the room slowly, forcing my breathing to remain steady even though the silence pressing against the walls felt suffocating, like the air itself had been locked in this place for years and had long since forgotten how freedom tasted.“There has to be a way out of this place,” I murmured under my breath.But the moment the words left my mouth, another thought interrupted me.The picture.Helina.The man.And the boy.My gaze sharpened immediately.Where did that picture go?I looked around the room again, scanning every corner with increasing urgency.Under the bed.I remembered clearly now.Dropping to my knees, I bent forward and looked beneath the bed, expecting to see the photograph lying exactly where it had slipped from my hand earlier.There was nothing.I frowned slowly and rose to my feet again, replaying the memory carefully in my mind, reconstructing every detail the way one would piece together fragments of broken glass.Helina.Dre
The Night Before Christmas Chapter 8: The Breaking Point
I wiped away my tears, sensing someone call my name.Strong hands steadied me.I looked up.Desmond Howard.“Sir,” I whispered, startled.For a brief, dangerous moment, everything else fell away. His deep blue eyes held mine, calm and unreadable, and I felt myself drowning in their intensity.“Aria
Last Updated : 2026-03-17The Night Before Christmas Chapter 13: Seven Days
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Last Updated : 2026-03-18The Night Before Christmas Chapter 15: Confrontation with Mum
Aria’s POVI returned to the ward and lowered myself into the chair beside Hailey’s bed, my body finally catching up with the exhaustion I had been outrunning all day. The machines hummed softly around us, their steady beeping the only proof that time was still moving.“Mummy,” Hailey’s thin voice
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Aria’s POV“Mummy, what is going on?” she asked, and I knew there was no escape left.She needed to know. I had run out of safe lies, out of excuses that would protect her innocence without breaking it. The truth had a way of finding daylight, and tonight, it stood between us, small and brave and w
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