Home / Romance / A Prison Called Love Taboo / Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

All Chapters of A Prison Called Love Taboo: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

245 Chapters

141. When His Protection Hurts

SELENASienna’s face crumpled so fast it barely gave warning.One second she was sitting on the couch with her dragon, watching Kael’s expression with that careful, measuring look she had learned too young. The next second her mouth opened and a raw, broken sound came out of her that didn’t belong in the body of a four-year-old.“Stop it!”The yell cracked through the living room. She shoved herself off the couch so hard the dragon fell to the floor. Her small hands were balled into fists at her sides, face already wet, chest heaving.“Stop talking like that! Stop looking at each other like that!” Her voice rose higher with every word. “You keep doing this! You talk and talk and your faces get scary and then Mummy cries and Daddy gets quiet and I hate it!”“Sienna… ” I started.“No!” She stepped back when I reached for her. “You didn’t answer me downstairs! You didn’t answer me on the stairs that day! You only talk to each other like I’m not here and then you want me to say the right

142. His Possession Slips Away

SELENAThe call came at 6:12 a.m.I was already awake. I had spent most of the night in the hallway outside Sienna’s room, listening to her breathe through the door she refused to open again after her meltdown. Kael had been downstairs. The light under the study door never went out.When his phone rang, the sound carried up the stairs like a shot.By the time I reached the study, he was standing in the middle of the room with the phone to his ear and a face that had gone completely white under the jaw.“Say that again,” he said.I couldn’t hear the other side. I only heard the silence that followed, long and total, before he answered.“No. We were not notified of a transfer request. No. She is not prepared. You will put the judge on the line. Now.”Another pause.Then, quieter: “On what grounds was it signed overnight?”My hand found the doorframe. The wood was cool under my palm. Somewhere above us Sienna was still asleep, or pretending to be, in the room she had screamed she hated.

143. His Greatest Loss

SELENAThey were in the entryway by 9:04 a.m.Two court officers. One social worker with a soft voice and firm eyes. A folded order that Kael’s lawyer had already confirmed was real. Outside, the guards had been pulled back just far enough that no one could photograph them looking like a private army. The house felt stripped. Exposed.Sienna stood behind my legs in her yellow dress, dragon crushed against her chest. She had stopped asking questions. She only watched faces now.Kael stood between us and the door.“You’re not taking her,” he said.The senior officer didn’t rise to the tone. “Mr. Carter, the order is signed. Temporary supervised placement pending the Friday hearing. You can contest it in court. You cannot block it at the door.”“I can refuse entry.”“And we can return with police enforcement. That helps no one. Least of all the child.”Sienna’s hand twisted in the back of my clothes.I moved before the argument could harden further. My eyes were already burning. I hated

144. The Cost of His Obsession

KEALThe sound of the car was gone.What remained was the open front door, the empty booster-seat-shaped absence in the driveway, and Selena on the entryway floor with her hands braced on the wood like the house itself might tilt and throw her after the vehicle that had just taken our daughter.I closed the door.The click of the lock was too loud in the new silence. Outside, the guards had already returned to position. Professional. Efficient. Useless for the only thing that mattered. The order was signed. The car was gone. Sienna’s screaming had been carried down the street and around the corner and out of reach.Selena pushed herself up from the floor.When she turned around, her face was wrecked. Tears, unchecked. Eyes red. Mouth unsteady. The high collar she had worn for the specialist was twisted, and the old faint mark on her throat showed when she breathed too hard. She looked at me like she was seeing the exact point at which her life had taken the wrong turn.“This is your

145. Her Mother’s Bargain

SELENA The man at the gate did not leave when he saw us looking.He finished whatever he was doing on the phone, lifted it one more time toward the house, and only then rolled the window up. The black sedan sat there for another full minute, engine idling, before it pulled away from the curb and disappeared in the same direction the court car had taken Sienna.The space it left behind felt intentional. Kael was already moving. He unlocked his phone, called the head of security, and spoke in short, flat commands while walking to the door. I stayed on the stairs with my hand on the banister because the house still didn’t feel level. My palms ached from hitting him. My throat ached from screaming. My arms still held the shape of Sienna’s body from when they had pulled her off me.“Plate is already being run,” Kael said when he hung up. He did not look at me when he said it. “If he’s Clara’s, we’ll know within the hour. If he’s something else, we’ll know that too.”“Something else.”“No

146. You Want the Offer? Take It.

SELENA“I want the offer.”The words left my mouth before the fear of them could catch up. Kael’s hand was still around my wrist. Clara’s message was still open on the screen between us. Outside, the house remained locked down and empty of the only person who made the locks mean anything.Kael’s eyes lifted from the phone to my face.“No.”“I want it,” I said again. Harder. “If she can make this easier, if she can get Sienna out of a stranger’s house and into something less terrifying, then I want to hear the terms.”“The terms are Saturdays. Access. A permanent foot in the door she abandoned for five years.” His voice was low and already fraying at the edges. “She helped put our daughter in a placement home and then texted you like a hostage negotiation. And you want to accept the call.”“I want my child back in a bed I can drive to.” My throat burned. “I don’t care if the road there runs through my mother. I don’t care if it costs Saturdays. I don’t care if it costs pride. She is no

147. Terms and Conditions

SELENAI pressed call.Kael stood close enough that the speaker would catch every breath in the room. The line rang once. Twice. On the third ring Clara picked up, and the sound of her voice in our study made the empty house feel smaller.“Selena.” Not warm. Not surprised. “I thought you might reconsider once the silence set in.”“Where is she?”“Safe. Settled enough for the afternoon. She asked for you twice. They told her you would be in contact when it was appropriate.”My free hand gripped the edge of the desk. “I want her moved out of temporary placement. Today if possible. Tomorrow at the latest.”Clara was quiet for a second. I could hear the faint clink of something ceramic on her end. Coffee. Tea. The ordinary props of a woman who still had her life arranged the way she wanted it.“That depends on how ready you are to be reasonable,” she said. “The court is not going to undo an emergency order because you called your mother crying. But if both parents demonstrate cooperation,

148. Another Name on the List

KAELClara’s terms came out clean and practiced.Saturdays, two hours.First four weeks supervised by a neutral third party of her choosing.After that, unsupervised if no “incidents.”Emergency contact status.Access to school and medical updates.A written acknowledgment that maternal family involvement was in the child’s best interest.In exchange, she would “make representations” supporting a less restrictive interim arrangement before Friday,possibly even temporary return under conditions.Possibly.The word was doing a lot of work.I watched Selena’s face while Clara spoke. Hope was a visible, physical thing on her. It made her eyes too bright and her breathing too shallow. She was already halfway inside the offer because the alternative was another night of Sienna sleeping in a house that did not know her name.I muted the phone again.“She’s selling oxygen to people she helped suffocate,” I said.Selena’s jaw tightened. “She’s selling a path.”“She’s selling ownership in insta

149. Possession

SELENAThe second assignment sat between us like a live wire.Kael had already given the order to identify the target. He did it without raising his voice, the same way he did everything when the real violence moved inward. Then he went back to the paragraph Clara wanted, the carefully worded statement of “willingness” that was supposed to buy our daughter overnight oxygen.I watched him type and felt something close to hatred mix with the old, stupid pull that never fully died around him.“Send it,” I said.“I am.”“Now.”He looked up. The darkness in his face was quiet and complete. “If I send this, she owns a piece of the language. Language becomes precedent. Precedent becomes Saturdays.”“If you don’t send it, Sienna owns another night in a stranger’s bed.”The silence that followed was worse than shouting. He sent the paragraph. I watched the confirmation appear on the screen. It felt less like a negotiation and more like cutting off a finger to free a hand.An hour passed. The

150. Restraint

SELENA Sienna slept between us like a small, fragile truce.For the first hour I didn’t move at all. I watched her chest rise and fall, counted the intervals, listened for any change in her breathing that might mean she was about to wake up and panic again. Her hand stayed fisted in my shirt even in sleep. One of her feet was still pressed against Kael’s leg. She had needed both of us to prove the room was real.Kael wasn’t sleeping either.I could feel him on the other side of her; awake, silent, watching the same thing I was watching. The war had come back into the house in the shape of a sleeping child, and neither of us knew how to put our weapons down without looking unarmed.When I finally slipped out of bed, his voice followed me at once.“Where are you going?”“Downstairs.”“Stay.”The word was soft. Absolute. The same old ownership, only now it had the weight of a day where we had almost lost her completely.“I need water,” I said.I left before he could turn it into an arg

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