Home / Romance / A Prison Called Love Taboo / Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

All Chapters of A Prison Called Love Taboo: Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

245 Chapters

191. When Restraint Cracked

SELENA I left the house at 11:40 a.m. with a blazer over a plain dress and a lie shaped like errands.The guard at the gate asked if the driver should be notified. I said I was going to the pharmacy and the bookstore and would be back before pickup. My voice sounded ordinary. That was the part that later felt most like betrayal, how easy ordinary could be made to look from the outside.The interview was at a small private gallery in the old quarter, the kind of place that needed a program coordinator and did not need a Carter on the letterhead. I had sent the application from a café Wi-Fi three days earlier using an email Kael did not monitor because he did not know it existed. I sat across from a woman with silvered hair and ink on her fingers while she asked about scheduling, school-hour flexibility, and whether I could handle donors without becoming the news.“I can handle rooms,” I said.She smiled. “You start Mondays if you want it. Trial month. Quiet role. No press.”I should

192. The Cost of Freedom

SELENA He didn’t let me leave the stairwell.When I tried to step around him toward the landing, Kael’s bloodied hand closed around the banister in front of me, blocking the path with his whole body. The cracked plaster still dusted my shoulder. The torn job offer lay in pieces between our feet like mock confetti.“Move,” I said.“No.”“Kael, move.”He leaned in, eyes empty of every noon softness he had ever almost allowed. “You don’t give orders on the stairs you just used to run from me.”My pulse became a roar. “I’m not running. I’m leaving a conversation before it becomes something worse.”“It already is something worse.”I shoved at his chest. The impact did nothing except make his expression darken by another degree. His hand left the banister and closed around my upper arm, tight enough that a startled scream tore out of me before I could stop it.“Let go…”“You lied at my gate.”“Let go of me!”My second scream bounced up the stairwell, high and raw. Somewhere in the house a

193. Closing Every Door

KEALHer screams were still in the stairwell after she left it. The sound had ended. What remained was the shape of it in my head; high, torn, repeating every time I looked at the cracked plaster beside the place her face had been. White dust on the carpet. Blood drying in the split skin of my knuckles. Paper scraps from a gallery that would never see her again.I stood there until the shaking in my hands became something I could put away.Then I walked the house.Secondary gate logs first. Time stamps. Driver notes. The pharmacy lie sat clean in the morning record until the route diverged and the signal went soft near the old quarter. She had been careful. Not careful enough. Careful was an insult when it was used against me in my own perimeter.I found the café Wi-Fi history through the downstream device report the security team sent up without being asked. A new email address. Application materials. Message threads with a woman named Reza at a private gallery. Trial month. School-h

194. The Emergency Exit

SELENAI found out the gallery was gone when the number rang dead for the third time. Dead in the particular way that meant the line had been made to stop recognizing me. My secret email refused login. Password reset sent nowhere I could reach. The trial offer existed only as torn white scraps in a bin that had already been emptied by evening staff.I sat on the edge of the bed with my tablet and tried to breathe through the rising, incredulous panic.He had not only said no.He had erased the route.My hands moved before the fear could finish its lecture. Search bar. Private bank account. Without spouse access. Options, requirements, identification workarounds. I wasn’t even sure I would do it. I only needed to see if a door still existed that belonged to me alone.The tablet screen dimmed, brightened, then locked itself.A second later, the bedroom door opened.Kael stood there with his phone in his unbandaged hand and an expression that made the stairwell feel close again. He did

195. Touch Me Not

SELENA Morning became a system of minimal contact.I woke before him, showered, dressed, and had Sienna’s uniform laid out by the time Kael entered the kitchen. He said my name once, low, like a test. I poured cereal. When he stepped into my peripheral vision, I moved to Sienna’s chair and tied her shoes with total concentration.“Mummy, the left one is too tight.”“Tell me when it’s right.”“There. Perfect. Daddy can do the right one.”Only then did I glance up, not at Kael’s face, at the space near his hands. He crouched and tied the right shoe. Sienna patted both our heads like we were co-workers who had managed a basic task.“Everyone is quiet today,” she observed.“Eat,” I said.Kael tried again at the counter. “We need to talk about last night.”Sienna’s spoon hovered. “Are you fighting?”I turned to her immediately, voice light. “No. Drink your milk. We’re leaving in five minutes.”Kael went still behind me. I felt the weight of his stare on my spine and refused to give it a s

196. Out of Reach

SELENAI woke to Sienna standing over the sofa with Dragon and a look of deep administrative concern.“This is not a bedroom,” she whispered.“It’s a temporary bed.”“Temporary is for guests. Are you a guest?”“No.”She squinted. “Then this is a fight bed.”Before I could answer, Kael’s voice came from the doorway, already dressed, already closed. “Sienna. Clothes.”She turned between us, decided the adult air was contaminated, and left with a muttered note about writing this into the rulebook. Kael remained. I sat up, folded the blanket with deliberate care, and did not offer him a morning.“Move out of the way,” I said.He didn’t. “This sofa phase ends tonight.”“Leave me alone, Kael.”The sentence landed cleanly in the small room. His eyes narrowed, with distaste.“No.”“I am not asking for a discussion. I am telling you what I need. Leave me alone.”“You are in my house.”“Then give me the parts of it that do not require your commentary, your detection alerts, and your face at eve

197. The Hunt

SELENA It started with Sienna pointing at the stair wall in her socks.“The sick wall is better,” she said, “but still guilty.”The repair patch was smoother now, pale against older paint. I had walked past it for two days like it was ordinary architecture. Sienna never granted ordinary to damaged things.“Don’t touch it,” I said.“I wasn’t going to. I was diagnosing.” She looked up at me. “Is that why you sleep on the fight bed? Because Daddy made the wall sick and you got scared?”My throat closed around the first answer. She waited, patient as a clerk.“Mummy and Daddy had a hard day,” I said. “Grown-ups get quiet after hard days.”“You got quiet at Daddy. Not at me.” Her head tilted. “Also you jump when he comes into rooms. Not big jumps. Small ones. Like when a balloon pops far away.”I crouched so we were level. “I’m right here. You’re safe.”“I know I’m safe.” She patted my cheek with sticky fingers. “I’m asking if you are.”There was no clean reply that wasn’t a lie or a burd

198. Implementation

SELENA Sienna wanted both of us at the bathtub like co-defense attorneys.Kael washed her hair with the same focus he used on anything he refused to lose. I held the towel. We performed ordinary parents over the top of a house that had gone into quiet lockdown beneath our feet. Every so often Sienna glanced between our faces, measuring.“You’re both doing the polite version,” she said.“Rinse,” Kael replied.She rinsed, spit water theatrically, and tried again. “If Mummy takes me for noodles, is that a crime now?”“No,” I said.Kael’s hands did not pause in her hair. “It is a crime if the phone dies and the sky goes dark.”Sienna squinted. “So the crime is clocks.”“Yes,” he said.“That is a stupid law.”“Many are.”I wrapped her in the towel before the conversation could become a tribunal. Pajamas. Two stories. She insisted Kael read one and I read one, then asked Dragon to keep night watch against “adult soup leaks.” When her breathing finally settled, Kael switched on the monitor

199. When the Walls Talk

SELENA The school called at 11:17 a.m.Not the front desk voice that asked about lunch boxes. The counselor. Calm, careful, already trying not to sound like a problem.“Mrs. Carter? Sienna had a hard morning. She’s safe. We need you to come in.”I was already looking for shoes. “What kind of hard?”A pause. “She’s been talking about a ‘fight bed’ and a ‘sick wall’ at home. Today she told her teacher she doesn’t like it when Mummy jumps at Daddy’s footsteps. We don’t want to overinterpret. We do need a conversation.”The floor tilted once under me and then went very steady.“I’m on my way.”I did not call Kael first. Out of pure bodily knowledge that if I heard his voice while this was still landing, I would either scream or fold. I took the ordinary car. At the gate the new protocol held me for an extra minute of verification, as if the house itself wanted the school to wait. I stared straight ahead until the barrier lifted.At school, Sienna was in the counselor’s office with a bo

200. The Beginning of Leaving

SELENA Three weeks after the school meeting, the house had learned a new version of quiet.Kael left earlier and came back later. The company was “bleeding in places that required hands,” which was his way of saying Liam had stopped being a dining-room problem and become a week-long series of closed-door calls. I learned the shape of those days by the sound of his shoes in the entryway: hard, fast, already angry at something that had happened before he reached our gate. He still kissed Sienna’s hair. He still asked about her drawings. He did not ask about me unless it was logistical.I told myself that distance was what I had requested.I had not requested the rest of it.The doors answered slower. The drivers changed without notice. My phone had fewer useful apps than it used to, or maybe I had become paranoid enough to feel watched in every blank screen. When I took Sienna to school, two men came. When I said I wanted the market, the route was pre-set. No one called it punishment

...

18 19 20 21 22

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP