Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 9

***His head went under, and it didn't come back up.I didn't think. I dropped my shoes and hit the water before anyone else on the shore had even started screaming.I was ten years old that summer, already the strong one in a family that treated strength like a design flaw. Meridian Lake was cold enough to steal the breath straight out of my chest, but I'd always been built for exactly this, sturdy in the way relatives whispered about at barbecues, sturdy in the way that made my mother wince every time she introduced me. "Selene's built like a boy," she'd say, like it was an apology she owed people before they had the chance to notice themselves. I'd spent years afterward trying to make myself smaller in every photograph, hunching my shoulders, wearing clothes a size too big, hoping if I just tried hard enough, I could disappear into whatever shape my family actually wanted.That day, with a twelve-year-old boy's dead weight in my arms at the bottom of that lake, I was finally gratef

"Ryker, the lights.""They'll come back on." His voice was rough, closer than I expected in the dark. "Everything comes back eventually. Except her.""I should go find a candle. Or check the fuse box.""Stay."One word, quiet, and something about the way he said it made my whole body go still, the way an animal goes still when it senses the exact wrong moment to move, every instinct screaming at me to leave and my feet somehow refusing to obey."Ryker, I don't think…""You never think. That's the problem with you, Selene. You just stand there, quiet, careful, taking up exactly as little space as everyone's always wanted you to." His hand found my arm in the dark, his grip loose but certain, like he already knew I wasn't going to pull away, and some furious, tired part of me hated that he was right. "She would have laughed by now. Made a joke. Made this easier.""I'm not her.""I know." His voice cracked on the word, just slightly, grief bleeding through the whiskey. "I know you're not

"Who is this?"I typed the words again, my thumb hovering over send, my whole body still humming with the strange cold shock of a stranger knowing more about my marriage than I did.The reply came instantly, almost too fast, like they'd been waiting.Ask Ryker about Northgate Holdings. Ask him why his cousin's name keeps showing up on transfers nobody in that family has bothered to notice yet."Why should I trust you?" I typed back.You don't have to. You just have to look.Then nothing. The number went dead, no further replies, like whoever it was had said exactly what they needed to and vanished back into wherever they'd come from, leaving me alone on that terrace with a warning I had no idea what to do with yet."Selene." Elise's voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. "You've gone pale. What is it?"I hesitated, then handed her the phone.She read it twice, her expression unreadable in the low terrace light. "Northgate," she said slowly. "That name means something to me. I just c

It was only Marcus's car, tires screeching too fast out of the front gate, headlights swinging wild across the wet driveway before disappearing into the dark."He's running," I said."He's not running. He's regrouping." Ryker's voice had gone flat again, all business, the warmth from a moment ago sealed away somewhere I couldn't reach anymore, a door closing so quietly I almost missed the exact second it happened. "Lock your door tonight.""Ryker…""I mean it, Selene." He didn't look at me when he said it, already crossing to his desk, already pulling his phone out to make a call I wasn't invited to overhear. "This isn't a conversation. It's an instruction.""Ten minutes ago you were admitting things to me. Now I'm getting instructions.""Ten minutes ago was a mistake." He said it without looking up, and something about the flatness of it landed harder than if he'd shouted, a small precise wound instead of a large messy one. "I don't have the luxury of mistakes right now. Neither do y