Semua Bab In love with my step father in law : Bab 41 - Bab 50

---Chapter 41: Shattered FacadesThe rain beat against the penthouse windows, enveloping the city in a pall of grey and depressingness. Isla leaned against the floor-to-ceiling glass window, arms folded, her image warped next to the curving skyline. Christopher's leaving got under her skin—he had gone on impulse, pleading a business crisis, but she wasn't deceived. He was keeping something from her. Again.She redirected her attention inward, back to the study desk where the old letters of her mother were scattered. Time-yellowed pages, ink faintly faded, but the emotions shouted clear and loud. Every word written in diligent cursive, a documentation of a passion shrouded in darkness. Victor Kane. The name beat like a curse."I never fell out of love with him, Isla. He was my secret, my salvation and my sin."Her mother's words created a reality Isla wasn't prepared to confront, a past of sorrow and betrayal. It was not a matter of Victor's cruelty or manipulation. There had once been

Chapter 43: The Man Behind the MaskThe city was another monster at night—glittering glass teeth, neon-colored veins pulsating with power, hiding rot beneath the ugliness. Isla rested against Ethan's floor-length window, watching the streets below with eyes no longer innocent.------The truth from the estate had not worn off. If anything, it had intensified with the passage of time. Her mother's secret had changed everything.She had thought Victor Kane was just cruel—a control freak in love. But she saw the whole mosaic now. He had been duped. Her mother's child might not have been his. And Isla? She wasn't even sure where she belonged in the twisted twigs of her family tree anymore.A quiet thrum of jazz came from the corner speaker. Ethan came out of the kitchen, putting the glass of wine down next to her. His gaze held on her face, taking in the tough lines that had softened none. "No, your hands aren't shaking," he whispered."No, my hands are," she replied without looking at hi

---Chapter 45: The Echo of Secret TruthsIsla stood in the middle of her mother's old bedroom, where the smell of perfume and forgotten memories clung to the walls. She hadn't noticed that the floor creaked beneath her step before, but now it seemed each groan of the house was a voice trying to tell her something from the past. The letters, the pages, the picture of Victor Kane standing with her mother—it was all too much to overlook.She opened another note she'd found crumpled up within the lining of her mother's jewelry box. This one was different. No date. No hello. Just words, scribbled out in trembling script:"You never stop loving the devil who made you feel alive. I'm sorry."Isla's chest tightened. Her heart pounded.Her mother hadn't just been afraid of Victor Kane—she'd loved him. Or something like it. Maybe it wasn't love, actually. Maybe it'd been obsession. Desperation. Addiction to a man as handsome as he was lethal."We used to be friends," Mhairi said softly.The wal

—Chapter 47: A Scar Beneath the SurfaceThe mark.----Isla couldn't sleep—not after witnessing it etched into Christopher's chest. It was not a scar. It was a message. A warning. A foretelling of suffering. And now that she had witnessed it, something within her changed. Something wild and primal awoke beneath her skin.She sat in her mother's old desk chair, the pages of her past scattered around her—half-charred letters, shattered photograph frames, receipts from a bygone era. All of it told a story, and nothing of it existed anymore. The woman she'd pictured her mother to be was carefully curated. Guarded. Wound in silk and silence. But underneath that poised quiet had been a woman fleeing, bleeding, in fear.Victor had swiped over years—he'd swiped her identity, her choices, her control.She ran her fingers around the edge of a browned journal, something her mother would don when they'd travel. In it were scraps—poems, sketches, pressed flowers. But toward the end, written in dar

---Chapter 49: The Red RoomThe metal stank in the air the moment the lights went out.Isla held her breath as the hallway swallowed her up in darkness. For a moment, the only sound was the occasional buzz of outdated wiring, as if the Nest itself was breathing. She called out for Ethan.She didn't get an answer.She walked, hand skimming along the cold stone wall with each step, heart thumping. Then she heard a sharp click behind her. She spun around quickly.Nothing.Her phone buzzed-just once-before the screen cracked and died in her hand. The last thing she saw was a single message."RUN."But she didn't run. Not yet.She was no longer that girl who ran from the truth. Not that girl who once believed that pain was weakness. Now it was proof-of love, loss, and what refused to be buried in the past.She stood up and walked toward the back of the house toward where they had stored what was left of the files and what was left of the weapons. Walking by one of the metal doors, she saw