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Lahat ng Kabanata ng Tempted by my brother-in-law. : Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

121 Kabanata

ELENA

POV: NikolaiELENAShe had been in the garden when I came downstairs.I had not gone looking for her. I had gone to find Alex, who had sent me a message at seven about a new thread in the pharmaceutical records, and the route to the east wing where he was stationed took me past the window that overlooked the garden path.I slowed without meaning to.She was sitting on the bench near the flower beds with her legs crossed and something in her hands she was not looking at. Her hair was down. She was wearing something dark and simple and she looked like the only real thing in the entire manicured picture of the garden around her.I kept walking.Alex was in the east sitting room with his laptop and a cup of coffee and the particular focused expression he wore when he had found something he was not sure how to deliver."Tell me," I said.He turned the screen toward me.The pharmaceutical company's internal records showed a private advisory contract. The name on it was not Imelda Varyn. It

MONTH

POV: HazelMONTHI found out about the deadline on a Tuesday afternoon.Not from Kaden. Not from the matriarch. From his mother, in the small parlour off the east corridor, over tea I had not asked for and had not wanted, delivered with the particular warmth she used when she wanted something to feel like a conversation and not what it actually was.She had sent a staff member to find me after lunch. The message was polite. Just that she would love to have tea with her daughter-in-law. I had learned early that declining was never actually an option, so I changed into something presentable and went.She was already seated when I arrived. The tea was poured. She gestured to the chair across from her with a smile that had nothing behind it.I sat down.She asked about my morning. I told her it was fine. She asked if I had slept well. I said yes. She commented on the garden, the weather, the upcoming gathering. I responded where I was supposed to and waited for the real conversation to st

REASON

POV: Hazel REASONHe said come with me and I followed him.Not because I trusted him completely. Because the alternative was going back to my room and sitting with what I had just overheard and doing nothing with it, and I had spent a year doing nothing with things and I was done with that.He took me to the east sitting room and closed the door and checked the hallway first, both directions, the way someone does when they have been moving through dangerous spaces long enough that it has become automatic.I sat down.He did not.He stood near the window with his arms crossed and looked at me for a moment with an expression I was starting to recognise. The one that meant he was deciding how much to give and in what order."Dorian Voss," I said. "Who is he.""Someone connected to my family," he said. "From a long time ago.""That is not an answer.""No," he said. "It is not."He looked at the window. Then back at me. Something shifted in his expression and he unfolded his arms and sat

ARCHIVE

POV: HazelARCHIVENikolai came to my door at midnight.Three quiet knocks. Enough to wake me if I was sleeping, not enough to carry down the hall. I had not been sleeping. I had been lying on top of the covers in the dark staring at the ceiling and thinking about one month and Dorian Voss and the folder with my name on it that someone had put in a family archive before I even knew the Varyns existed.I opened the door.He was dressed, jacket on, and he had that particular expression he wore when he was focused on something. Not warm. Not cold. Just present and sharp and entirely too close in the narrow doorway."Alex cleared the access," he said quietly. "We have forty minutes before the security rotation comes back around."I grabbed my cardigan off the chair and followed him out.The house was different at midnight. The same rooms and corridors but quieter in a way that made everything feel more exposed. Our footsteps were soft on the floor and we moved without talking, him slightl

TEXT

POV: HazelTEXT"You have something on your mind."Celeste said it without looking up from her phone, both of us in the upstairs sitting room after lunch, the kind of comfortable quiet that meant she had been watching me for a while and had decided to stop pretending she had not."I always have something on my mind," I said.How was I going to get one heir with uncooperative Kaden?!"Not like this." She set her phone down. "You have been staring at that wall for ten minutes."I looked at the wall. She was not wrong."Kaden's mother cornered me this morning," I said."I know," she said. "I saw her take you into the parlour. What did she say."I looked at her. Celeste was sharp and she was family and she had been kind to me from the first day and she was also Kaden's sister and I had learned in a year of this house that kindness and loyalty were not always the same thing."She told me to enjoy the estate," I said.Celeste looked at me for a long moment with the expression she used when

WATCHED

POV: NikolaiWATCHED"You already know," she said.It was not a question. She was looking at me with those eyes that never missed anything and her phone was still in her hand with the message open and she had read my face faster than most people read words."I know who is sending them," I said. "I do not know everything they know.""Then tell me what you do know."I looked at the garden around us. Empty. The house was visible from three angles but nobody was at the windows I could see. Still I stepped closer before I spoke, close enough that my voice would not carry."The sender is not a threat," I said. "They are an ally. Someone who has been inside the Varyn family's information for years and has been feeding you pieces deliberately. Carefully. One at a time."She stared at me. "Who.""That I am not going to tell you yet," I said.Her expression shifted. "Nikolai.""Because if I tell you who it is you will go to them directly and that will change the dynamic they have been carefully

Bench

POV: HazelBENCH"Tell me something true," I said.He looked at me from the other end of the bench with an expression that said he was not expecting that to be the opening."About what," he said."Anything," I said. "I have been in this house for two weeks and everyone in it says things that mean other things and I am tired of it. Just tell me something that is actually true."He was quiet for a moment.The garden was dark around us. We had come out here separately, twenty minutes apart, the way we always did now when we needed to talk without the house watching. I had come out first. He had found me on the bench without me telling him where I would be, which said something about how well he knew my patterns now and which I was not going to examine too closely.He looked at the path."Elena was afraid of storms," he said. "Not the way people are usually afraid of them. She would not say she was afraid. She would just go very quiet when the sky changed and start moving through rooms, c

The room

POV: NikolaiTHE ROOMShe opened the door before I finished knocking.Like she had been standing on the other side of it. Like she had been standing there since the bench.She stepped back to let me in and I crossed the threshold and she closed the door behind me and then we were in the room together with no garden around us and no darkness to blame it on and nothing between us except the specific silence of two people who had stopped pretending.She was still in what she had worn outside. Hair loose. No performance in her expression at all.I looked at her."Last chance," I said."You already used that line," she said."Did it work the first time.""You're here, aren't you."I crossed the room and she did not move back and I put my hands on her face the way I had wanted to for longer than I was going to say out loud and kissed her the way I had not let myself on the bench. Not careful. Not slow. The kind of kiss that says something has been held back for too long and is done being he

The message

THE MESSAGEPOV: Nikolai She was asleep when I left.I stood at the edge of the bed for a moment and looked at her. Hair across the pillow. One hand open beside her face. The sleeve of crackers still on the nightstand like she had just set it down for a moment and would be back for it.I picked up my shirt from the floor and left.Not the way I had left after the ball. That had been flight. This was something else. I needed four walls that were not hers and air that did not smell like her and enough distance to think clearly, which I had not been able to do since the bench and possibly longer than that.The hallway was empty. The house was dark and still in the way it only was between three and five in the morning, that specific silence that belonged to no part of the day.I went outside.The garden was cold. I stood on the path where we had been sitting two hours ago and pulled out my phone and called the number.It rang twice."I wasn't sure you'd call tonight," Sable said.His voi

the husband

THE HUSBANDPOV: Hazel Kaden did not leave for work.I noticed at eight fifteen when his car was still in the drive. I noticed again at nine when I heard his voice in the study, cancelling something, the tone he used when he was reorganising a day rather than ending it. By nine thirty he had appeared in the sitting room with a second cup of coffee and a manner that I had never seen on him in twelve months of marriage.Relaxed. Present. Like a man with nowhere to be.It was the most frightening thing I had seen all week."You don't have meetings," I said. Not a question."Moved them," he said. He sat down across from me with the ease of someone who lived here, which technically he did, though you would not always know it. "I have been in the office too much. Thought I would take the morning."I looked at him over my book."The whole morning," I said."Maybe the day," he said.I turned a page I had not read.He was pleasant. That was the specific quality of it that I could not get my h

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