All Chapters of One night with my brother inlaw : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

34 Chapters

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Chapter 79: Broken Lyra’s POV Tlooked over at Dax, hoping to find something in his eyes— a flicker of understanding, forgiveness, anything. Bu he turned away, unable to even look at me My heart sank. Then I glanced at Keal and his face was a storm of anger; he turne his gaze from me, too, like I wasn’t worth his attention. Finally, I looked at Ronon. The silence between us spoke volumes. I guess deep down, I still hoped they’d protect me, tha they’d cover for me, because they were m mates. They were supposed to shield me weren’t they? But then I looked at the crowd gathered around us, and the fury in their faces was unmistakable. I knew I was done for. If th Alphas weren’t here, they’d kill me. It was in the eyes of the people. They wanted me dead. Why would my desperation to escape warrant so much hatred? The Guard continued to strip away my clothes, piece by piece, exposing me not just to the cold but to the judgment and wrath of everyone watching. I struggled te hold back the

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Silence had a different texture now. It felt tactical, purposeful — like the quiet before a tide that would sweep everything away. I sat at the kitchen table with a thin lamp casting a pool of yellow over the papers I’d spread out: names, dates, fragments of conversations, an ugly web that traced back in ugly, familiar lines. The ink on the paper looked small and sane, but the things written there were not. They were seeds of war. After last night I had slept maybe two hours in fits, propped in a chair, hand over hand on the phone, calling people I’d kept at arm’s length for years and some I had never had reason to call until now. I’d always run my company like a general: contingency plans, exit strategies, redundancies. This was the same muscle; the stakes were different. This was no longer about quarterly reports or hostile takeovers. This was about my children, and that made the calculations sharper, meaner. I picked up my pen and circled a name I kept returning to: an old priva

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82 The Heart I Couldn’t Stay Away FromAric’s POVSleep didn’t come.Not even for a moment.I lay awake the entire night, staring at the ceiling as the hours crawled by with a heaviness that pressed into my bones.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Selene’s face the moment she must have seen the broadcast—her expression crumpling, her heart breaking all over again.Did she cry?Was she shaking the way she does when she tries to hold pain inside?Was she staring at the screen in disbelief, wondering if I had chosen someone else?If I had lied to her?If she had been nothing more than a fleeting distraction?Or worse—Was she making up with Damon out of spite?Out of heartbreak?Out of wanting to forget me because I had hurt her in the most public, humiliating way?The thought made something dangerous coil inside my chest.I turned again, restless, suffocating.Not knowing was killing me.I kept replaying the moment my father whispered in my ear during the ball, threatening Selene so ca

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02 Where We Sin in SilenceIvana POVI didn't go home after Selena finished with me.I couldn't.Home meant my mother's eyes, sharp enough to slice through any lie. Home meant questions I didn't know how to answer. Home meant that quiet corner of the pack where pain echoed louder because nothing else lived there.So I limped into the woods instead.Night came quickly, the sky bruising purple, the air damp with rain waiting to fall. My ribs ached with every breath, and my side burned where her boot had landed again and again.Each step sent the same message through my body: you're human. you're soft. you're breakable.I hated that the pack could make me feel like a mistake in my own skin.I hated even more that I still carried hope like a sickness I couldn't cure.The cabin sat deeper in the woods, hidden behind thick branches and climbing vines. It wasn't mine. It wasn't his either. Abandoned years ago, left to rot, and somehow it became ours.A place for secrets.A place for love tha

CHAPTER 25

Liana’s POVIt was 2:47 a.m.I knew because I had looked at my phone four times in the last hour, each time hoping enough time had passed that I could convince myself to go back to bed.It hadn’t. I couldn’t.The bedroom had stopped feeling like a room and started feeling like a decision I was trapped inside. Matteo’s breathing on the other side of it — slow, unbothered, the sleep of a man whose conscience had never once kept him up — made the walls press closer with every passing minute.So I got up.I didn’t turn on any lights. Just moved through the dark hallway in bare feet, one hand trailing the wall, heading somewhere that wasn’t there.The kitchen was cool and quiet. City light came through the window above the sink in pale strips, just enough to see by. I didn’t reach for the switch.I just slid down against the cabinet beneath the counter until I was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, back against the cool wood.And I let it come.Not dramatically. There was noth

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CHAPTER 23Liana’s POVThe first thing I noticed was the cold.Not the room — the sheets. His side of them. I pressed my palm flat against the space beside me before I fully opened my eyes, the way you reach for something in the dark without thinking.Cold. Completely.I opened my eyes.Empty.I lay there for a moment looking at the ceiling. Listening. The house had a particular quality of silence at this hour — thick and undisturbed. No movement. No water running. No footsteps.I sat up.The note was on the pillow. Small. Folded once. My name on the outside in his handwriting — neat, controlled, exactly like him.I picked it up with the easy hands of someone who wasn’t worried yet. Maybe he had an early call. Maybe something with Alex. Maybe—Liana —Something came up. I had to leave.Take care of yourself.— MI read it once.Then I set it on the nightstand and got up to shower.Something came up. That was fine. Things came up. He was a busy man — calls, business, the investigation,

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Ch 66: Stop Right ThereANA.“What do you mean?” I crawled backwards, making a visible distance from him. “I’m not going anywhere, I need to go back to Saint Petersburg. My flight is already booked, so tell your so-called boss I have no fucking time.”Saying that, I got up from the floor and started to walk out when suddenly Alex grabbed my right wrist and dragged me inside. Tossing me on the floor, he casually shrugged off his shoulders and scratched his head with the tip of the gun.“I think you are misinterpreting my words, Miss Ana.”“What do you mean?” I knitted my eyebrows in seriousness, but I was tipsy and barely holding myself together. “Alex, you better take care of the mess you created,” I said, pointing at the dead bodies of John and his bodyguards.To which Alex laughed. Taking steps towards me, he kicked the bodies out of his way.“That’s not the problem here, but if you refuse to go with me then it could become a problem…”“I will call the cops and say you were the one

23: The empty room

Liana’s POVThe first thing I noticed was the cold.Not the room, the sheets. His side of them. I pressed my palm flat against the space beside me before I fully opened my eyes, the way you reach for something in the dark without thinking.Cold. Completely. I opened my eyes.Empty.I lay there for a moment looking at the ceiling. Listening. The house had a particular quality of silence at this hour, thick and undisturbed. No movement. No water running. No footsteps.I sat up.The note was on the pillow. Small. Folded once. My name on the outside in his handwriting, neat, controlled, exactly like him.I picked it up with the easy hands of someone who wasn’t worried yet. Maybe he had an early call. Maybe something with Alex. MaybeLiana Something came up. I had to leave.Take care of yourself.MmI read it once.Then I set it on the nightstand and got up to shower.Something came up. That was fine. Things came up. He was a busy man, calls, business, the investigation, any number of thi

24: his baby

Liana’s POVI had forgotten what this felt like.Not the heartbreak, I knew heartbreak. Matteo had introduced me to that in the first year of our marriage and refined it steadily ever since. I knew heartbreak the way you know a recurring illness, its patterns, its duration, how long before it became manageable again.This was different.This was the specific pain of someone who had been starving for a long time, who had finally been handed something real and warm and nourishing, and then had it taken back before they had finished.That kind of hunger doesn’t return to where it was before.It returns worse.Because now it knows what it’s missing.I moved through the morning like a woman underwater. Slow. Muffled. The edges of everything are slightly blurred. Maria brought breakfast and I sat in front of it and ate some of it because my body required it, not because I tasted anything.I kept thinking about small things.Not the night, I couldn’t think about the night yet. That was st

24 His baby 2

Liana povA baby?A woman in London?Pregnant.I looked at the book in my lap.The words on the page had stopped meaning anything several seconds ago. They were just shapes now. Just marks on paper.Some woman he’s been with.I thought about the night. About his hands and his voice and the way he had looked at me afterward, are you okay, like it mattered. Like I mattered.I thought about something came up on a folded piece of paper.Something came up.A baby came up.A whole woman in London came up.A whole life I knew nothing about came up.I pressed my fingers flat against the page of the book.“Liana.” I looked up.Matteo was watching me with mild irritation. “I said, did he eat before he left? Maria mentioned the kitchen was used late.”I held his gaze.“I don’t know,” I said evenly. “I was asleep.” I knew he was asking silly questions to understand my mood He studied me for a second longer than felt comfortable.Then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” Back to his phone.I looked back a

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