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Chapter 9: Iris
Last Updated:
2025-12-26 00:08:39
Latest chapter
Where Desire Becomes Ruin Chapter 16: Selene Ward
Selene Ward had perfected the art of waiting. She waited outside Lucien Blackwood’s office every morning before anyone else arrived, heels aligned neatly beneath her chair, posture flawless, expression serene. She waited for his schedule updates, his moods, the smallest flicker of approval in his eyes when she anticipated a need before he spoke it aloud. And she waited for Iris Calloway to fail. Selene told herself it was professional resentment at first. Iris didn’t work for Blackwood Industries. She didn’t earn her place through sixteen hour days or razor sharp precision. She hadn’t clawed her way up from nothing the way Selene had. Iris had simply arrived. Beautiful. Quiet. Untouchable. Lucien’s fiancée. Selene hated her for that alone. But hate sharpened into something darker the day Selene realized the truth—Lucien didn’t just choose Iris. He softened around her. His voice lowered when he spoke her name. His relentless control loosened, just slightly, in her presence. Lu
Where Desire Becomes Ruin Chapter 15: Lucien
Lucien Blackwood did not shout when he realized Iris was not coming back on her own. He stood very still. Anger, when it came to Lucien, did not burn hot and fast. It condensed. It sharpened. It settled into his bones like iron cooling after a forge. The kind of anger that didn’t ask why—only how. He was already dressed when the confirmation arrived. The ring. Security’s message was brief, clinical, almost apologetic: Engagement ring recovered. Temporary location confirmed. Lucien stared at the screen for a long moment. The ring was not a symbol to him. It was a contract. A declaration. A public line drawn that said this woman belongs with me. Iris removing it was not an emotional gesture, it was a challenge. Lucien accepted challenges. He dismissed the staff for the morning with a single message. He wanted silence. He wanted no witnesses to the recalibration that followed. The penthouse felt wrong now—not empty, but violated. Iris’s absence wasn’t loud; it was precise. The
Where Desire Becomes Ruin Chapter Fourteen — Iris
Freedom didn’t feel like freedom at first. It felt like waiting for the door to burst open. It felt like flinching every time a car slowed near the curb, like scanning every reflective surface for a familiar face, like waking with my heart already racing because my body still believed it belonged to someone else. By the third night, Adrian had moved us twice. We didn’t unpack. We didn’t linger. We treated every room like a temporary shelter—walls to hide behind, not a place to breathe in. The second motel had smelled like cigarettes and bleach. The third was cleaner, smaller, tucked behind a diner on a road that felt like it belonged to no one. Adrian called it smart. I called it exhausting. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my hands. My finger feels empty without that ring but it's also freeing. Adrian came in from the parking lot with two coffees and a bag of food that neither of us would touch. His eyes swept the room automatically, checking corners, windows, locks—p
Where Desire Becomes Ruin Chapter Thirteen — Lucien
Lucien Blackwood knew Iris was gone before anyone said the words out loud. The penthouse told him. It told him in the way the air felt untouched, undisturbed by the subtle chaos Iris always brought with her. It told him in the way the bedroom looked staged rather than lived in, the bed smoothed too carefully, the bathroom counters cleared of the quiet disorder she never quite erased. It told him in the silence—too complete, too obedient. Lucien stood in the doorway of the bedroom, hands in his pockets, gaze sweeping the room with practiced precision. She hadn’t packed. That was the first thing he noticed. No drawers emptied. No hangers missing. Her clothes still lined the closet in soft, neutral colors chosen to disappear into his world. The jewelry tray untouched. Shoes aligned like soldiers waiting for orders. This wasn’t a dramatic escape. This was strategy. Lucien crossed the room and stopped at the nightstand. Her phone was gone. That mattered. He reached for his own d
Where Desire Becomes Ruin Chapter 12: Iris / Adrian
Iris The city at night had never felt so loud.Every horn sounded like a warning. Every passing shadow felt deliberate. Adrian moved beside me with quiet urgency, his hand firm at my back as he guided me through side streets and underground entrances that smelled like rain and metal. The anonymity of it all. faces blurring past, voices overlapping should have been comforting. Instead, it made everything feel real. wasn’t slipping out of Lucien’s world anymore.I had left it.We descended into a parking structure two blocks from the apartment, the echo of our footsteps bouncing off concrete walls. Adrian stopped at a nondescript sedan tucked between delivery vans. No Blackwood logo. No luxury. Just something forgettable. “Get in,” he said softly. I slid into the passenger seat, my hands shaking as I fastened the belt. Adrian started the engine without turning on the headlights, rolling forward until we merged into traffic. Only then did he speak again. “You okay?” he asked. T
Where Desire Becomes Ruin Chapter Eleven — Adrian
Adrian Blackwood had always understood protection as a problem to solve. It wasn’t the kind of protection that came with loud threats or dramatic gestures. It was precision. It was prevention. It was knowing where danger would come from before it arrived and cutting it off at the source. That was how he’d survived being Lucien’s brother. That was how he’d survived being a Blackwood at all. And now Iris was sitting on the edge of his couch in a quiet apartment no one knew was his, her bag clutched in both hands like it contained the last pieces of her life which, in a way, it did. Her eyes were too wide, her posture too rigid, as if she expected a door to slam open at any moment and for Lucien to step through it with that calm smile that never promised mercy. Adrian shut the door behind him and locked it. Then he locked it again deadbolt, chain, secondary latch because redundancy was how you stayed alive in this world. Only after the final click did he allow himself to breathe.
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