LOGINThey met every day that week at five o'clock.The flower shop had a rhythm to it at that hour, the morning customers long gone, the evening ones not yet arrived, the woman behind the counter doing paperwork or rearranging the buckets with the half-attention of someone whose mind was partly elsewhere. She had stopped noticing Ava after the second week of regular visits, which was the gift of becoming a regular anywhere. You became part of the furniture. Part of the expected pattern of the afternoon.Damien had watched the shop from the outside for three days before he walked in. He had noted the back room. The sightlines from the street. The timing of the staff movements. The angle at which the security camera above the door pointed, which caught the entrance but not the left-hand corner where the taller plants were displayed, and which could not, if you stood correctly, place two people together in the same frame.He had always been thorough…Ava used to tease him about it because she
[Phoenix code solutions]Lucas rushed in after receiving a disturbing text message from Damien which he has chosen not to believe till their was pictorial evidence, but it was more than a picture…it was different clips.“My men took pictures of Adrain's villa and guess who they found?” Damien askedLucas blinked repeatedly as Damien swiped on different clips of Ava, “That's…that’s” he stuttered “Ava…my Ava”Damien smiled, like he was expecting something like this, “I've always suspect they had a hand in this but I don't know why I delayed this spying”Damien frownedLucas watched the clips, seeing how Ava was smiling and hugging Amber…she also hugged Adrian…too close and it doesn't look like she was being forced, “Are you sure she's the one or maybe a look alike because the person I'm seeing here seems to like your sister and Adrian”Damien looked at the clips too, noticing what Lucas was talking about, “That's Ava but she doesn't look like she's been forced to do all that…”“More like
[Lisbon Coast] [Adrain's villa]The villa on the Lisbon hillside had a quality to it that was difficult to name precisely. From the outside… the white walls, the wide windows that caught the Atlantic light in the morning, the terracotta path that curved around the side of the building toward the garden, it looked like the kind of place people chose because they wanted to feel peaceful.Inside, it had the order of a place that was managed carefully by someone who understood that control over an environment was a form of control over the people who lived in it. Every room was clean and all the surface sparkling, nothing was left out that hadn't been approved. Adrian Cole stood at the top of the wide staircase and watched his mother, Amber cross the entrance hall toward him, and he felt something that was close to ease. He had changed…even he would admit that, if asked. Although he was rarely asked anything he didn't want to answer. The months on the hillside with Ava had done somethin
Ethan had not planned to become the kind of man who knew how to warm baby formula at two in the morning without spilling it, burning himself or making any sound that might wake the child who had finally, finally gone down after forty minutes of being walked in slow circles around the living room.He had not planned for any of this, technically. But plans, in his experience, were the kinds of things life treated as suggestions.He set the small bottle down on the counter and listened…but the silence from the hallway made him release breath he didn't know he had been holding. He turned around and leaned back against the counter with his arms folded, as he looked at the living room which had rearranged itself over the past several months due to the presence of a baby. There was a bouncer chair beside the couch, soft folded blankets over the arm of the sofa and the small mobile he'd had someone install over the corner of the room that played a particular sequence of notes that helped kee
[Phoenix Code Solutions]Phoenix Code Solutions had always carried a particular kind of energy, organised and pressurised as a company that ran on precision and expected nothing less from every person who walked through its doors and that had not changed in a year.What had changed was the temperature of it.Not literally because the climate control in the upper floors was perfect as it had always been but something in the air of the executive floor had shifted over the past twelve months into something the staffs were scared to explain and the cause of it sat at the desk in the corner office. Damien Cole.Damien Cole looked the same, technically. He was still the kind of man whose presence rearranged the room he walked into, still controlled in his bearing and deliberate in the way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he turned a page or set a phone down. He had not let himself go the way some men did in grief. He did the opposite, actually…he had tightened everything, compressed it,
[ONE YEAR LATER] [SilverCrest Academy]The lecture hall at Silver Crest Academy was filled with a particular stillness, the last professor for the day just walked out and the remaining students in the hall were too tired and stressed to be loud about anything, only the sounds of chairs scraping, bags getting zipped and the ones that had to answer calls, walking out. The usual end of day noise that most people moved through without thinking.April moved through it without hearing any of it and she had been like that for a year…present in body but somewhere else entirely in everything else. She sat in the same seat she had picked at the start of semester, third row, left side, close enough to see the board without sitting in the front where the eager ones sat.Her notes were always complete and attendance was perfect…she showed up, wrote things down, answered when called upon but gave nothing else except those, people had learned not to expect more than that.It's even a miracle she di
“Dad…” Ava’s voice came out softer than she expected, and she rushed in for a hug.“You're here without Adrian, that's new” Mr Sterling noticed, dropping his newspaper safely on the side table and adjusting his glasses.“He had an important meeting to attend…”Ava explained leaving out the part that
Ava regained consciousness slowly, the faint scent of antiseptic and something softer, foral, filling her senses. Her lashes fluttered open as she saw a white ceiling, and soft beeping sounds.She was in a hospital.For a moment, she laid still, trying to gather herself, her body heavy and slightly
The next day, Ava and Adrian arrived at the sprawling Cole mansion. The estate was massive, with multiple residences within the compound, guarded heavily, and their car’s journey from the gate to the main house alone felt like a mile-long walk.Adrian noticed that Ava seemed off but every time he a
Ava sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the neatly unpacked suitcase beside her. The TV was off now, and the room was quiet except for the faint hum of the city outside her window. She had carefully put away every piece of clothing, arranged her toiletries, and even tidied the kitchen a little w







