Semua Bab In love with my step father in law : Bab 11 - Bab 20

Chapter 11: Ashes and InvitationsSix months passed. Long enough for bruises to fade, but not the memories.The trial had ended with Ethan sentenced to thirty years without parole. A courtroom filled with gasps, camera flashes, and cold stares — but none of that mattered anymore.We had survived.But survival wasn’t the same as peace.Christopher still woke up gasping some nights, sweat clinging to his skin like regret. I would wrap my arms around him, whispering reminders that we were far from that house now. Far from the poison in its walls. The ghosts were behind us.Mostly.---We bought a place two hours from the city — a glass-paneled cabin near the lake. It was the opposite of everything we had known: open, sun-washed, surrounded by silence that wasn’t suffocating.Christopher spent his mornings sketching.I wrote again — stories, poetry, fragments of thoughts that no longer had to be hidden beneath floorboards or diaries.There was healing in creation.But also hesitation.Bec

Chapter 13: Beneath the AshesMorning arrived with a brittle silence. The kind that clung to Isla's skin like a second layer of unease. Despite the letter and the shadowy figure near the trees the night before, she tried to maintain some sense of normalcy. But the coffee tasted off. The walls of their sanctuary felt closer. Her thoughts were louder.Christopher had already taken a call from an old contact in legal affairs. The trust was real, verified, and older than expected. It had been created almost ten years ago, when Isla was still a teenager. Why Aurelia had chosen her—even then—was a mystery that only deepened the longer she stared at the legal documents.“What if Aurelia knew something about my mother?” Isla asked over breakfast. “Something she never told me?”Christopher looked up from his laptop, expression unreadable. “You think she felt responsible for your mother’s death?”“I think she carried guilt,” she replied. “That letter—she sounded... fragile. Desperate. And if Et

Chapter 15: The Stranger in the MirrorThe message on Isla’s phone burned into her vision. She read it again, her chest tightening with something close to panic.She left more than a will. You’re not the only one she marked. –EShe hadn’t seen that name in years. Ethan. Her mother's second husband. Her almost-stepfather. The man who disappeared after the funeral, taking with him a silence that had never quite been explained.Now he was back.She clutched the phone so tightly her knuckles ached.Christopher stirred beside her on the couch. The soft morning light filtering through the curtains cast him in a deceptive glow of peace. His arm was draped protectively over her waist, but the warmth she had felt hours ago had faded into a hollow chill.He noticed. “What is it?”She hesitated. “A message. From Ethan.”He sat up, tension carving his features. “What did it say?”She showed him.His eyes narrowed. “He was close to Aurelia. Too close.”“And my mother,” Isla added, voice cracking.

Chapter 17: Ashes of SilenceThe room was dark, but Isla couldn’t sleep.Christopher was beside her, shirtless, his breathing deep and steady, the heat of his skin grounding her in ways she couldn’t explain. The image of the photo, the child’s eyes—her eyes—kept burning behind her closed lids like a scar she’d only just begun to feel.A thousand questions coiled in her throat.She slipped quietly from the bed, pulling on one of Christopher’s shirts, the cotton falling halfway down her thighs. The corridors of the estate were still, the walls watching her. Every door she passed seemed to whisper—Aurelia, Ethan, the boy.Me.She walked to the library and pulled out the box of journals Aurelia left behind. Not the public ones—the hidden ones. Bound in black, aged with years and grief. One had a note tucked inside:“Memory is a double-edged sword. What you uncover may undo you.”Her hands trembled as she flipped through the pages. Most of the entries were formulaic—literally. Codes, neuro

---Chapter 19: Ashes Between UsThe fire started slowly.A single flare in the server room. Then another in the lab. The chemicals hissed and spat as heat crawled across the sterile metal surfaces, smoke curling like fingers grasping at forgotten sins.Isla watched it burn.Her body trembled, not from cold—but from everything unraveling within. Her skin felt too tight, her lungs too small for what she had just learned.She wasn’t born.She was built.A copy. A construct. An echo.And yet, she felt so much. Too much.The heat licked at the walls behind her, but all she could see was the small boy she had once imagined—herself at seven, sobbing in the garden after a nightmare, her mother rocking her with a lullaby.That memory was a lie.Someone had placed it inside her like a needle beneath skin.Christopher stepped beside her, face flickering in the light of the flames. His jaw was clenched, his body taut like a bow pulled too tight.“You don’t have to watch,” he said gently.“I do,”