All Chapters of Tempted by my brother-in-law. : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

ELENAPOV: NikolaiWe did not talk about the pregnancy that night.Not because it was not significant. Because Hazel looked at me after Celeste said it and I looked at her and we made a decision without speaking that some things needed to wait and that this was one of them. Celeste needed to be settled and the phone needed to go to the right people and Kaden needed to know about the transfers being Scott's work before he spent the night believing Nadia had done it to him.We handled all of it.By nine thirty the house had gone quiet in the specific way it went quiet after a long day, not peaceful exactly, more like exhausted, every person in it retreating to their own room with their own version of everything that had happened and the particular silence of people who have nothing left to perform for each other.I knocked on Hazel's door at ten.She opened it and she was already in something comfortable, a loose shirt and soft trousers, her hair down, the version of her that existed wh

TAKENPOV: HazelI sat up.Nikolai felt it and was awake in the same second, his hand on my arm, reading the room before I said a word."He took her," my mother said again. "Reeve. She was with my neighbor, a woman I trusted, someone who has been helping me for months. I went to collect her an hour ago and the neighbor's door was open and she was gone and there was a phone on the table. His number on the screen.""Did you call it," I said."Not yet," she said. "I called you first.""Where are you right now," I said."Outside the building," she said. "I did not know where else to go.""Do not go back inside," I said. "Get somewhere public and stay there. A restaurant, a lobby, anywhere with people and lights.""Hazel," she said. "She is eighteen months old."I pressed my hand flat against my knee."I know," I said. "I know. Stay on the line."I looked at Nikolai. He was already up, already pulling his shirt on, and I did not have to explain anything because he had heard enough and he w

BROTHERSPOV: NikolaiKaden found me after breakfast.I was in the study, the one I had been using since I came back, the room that was technically a shared space but that everyone had quietly ceded to me because I was in it most often and the Varyn family communicated ownership through consistent occupation rather than direct claim.He knocked, which he had never done before in thirty two years of being my brother."Come in," I said.He came in and closed the door and looked around the room the way he always looked at spaces, assessing, noting what had changed since he was last in it. My jacket over the chair. Elena's letter on the desk. The coordinates in the folder beside it.He sat down across from me.We looked at each other."You wanted to talk," I said."I have wanted to talk for about six weeks," he said. "I kept finding reasons not to.""What changed," I said."Isabella came to my room this morning," he said. "And I stood there listening to her talk about Iris and Reeve and I

MOUNTAINPOV: NikolaiI did not show anyone the message immediately.I stood in the lobby of Reeve's building with my phone in my hand and read it three more times and thought about Cold Stone Mountain and the months I had spent on it and the two kilometres I had been from the herb without knowing and the specific quality of a message that said come alone and meant it.Hazel was talking to the man at the desk, pushing for more details about the woman who had left with Reeve and the child, and Kaden was on his phone and Lena was standing very still in the way she stood when she was frightened and managing it.I looked at the message again.Her.One word that was doing a lot of work. Reeve knew exactly what that word would do to me. He had written Elena's letter, had known about the coordinates, had spent two years building a situation designed to bring me back to this city and this family. He knew me well enough to know that her pointed at Cold Stone Mountain would move me faster than

IRISPOV: HazelI got out of the car.My father stepped back from the doorway without me asking him to and I walked through it and into the cabin and the first thing I saw was Isabella sitting in a chair by the window looking like a woman who had driven four hours and arrived somewhere she had not fully prepared herself for.The second thing I saw was Iris.She was on the floor in the middle of the room with a wooden toy in her hand and Petra crouched beside her and she looked up when I came in with the specific unguarded curiosity of a child who had not yet learned to be cautious about new people.Dark hair. Wide eyes.My eyes. My mother had been right.I sat down on the floor in front of her.Petra moved back without being asked and I was aware of the room around me, Reeve standing near the back wall, Isabella by the window, my father somewhere behind me, Nikolai in the doorway, all of them present and all of them completely irrelevant for this specific moment.Iris looked at me.I