Burning Bridges Book Novels & Stories

Martin was always swift and decisive. His efficiency was trustworthy. Lying in bed, I thought of Edith tossing my suitcase into the fire and chuckled bitterly. That suitcase held her future. Those property deeds, company stocks, an overseas island, and a trust fund were to ensure her security after I left, but she had burned them just to spite me. That was a foolish choice, and I wouldn't replace what she had destroyed. The next morning, Edith's teacher called, waking me. "Mrs. Grayson? Edith forgot her backpack at home. Can you bring it to school?"

Damien's POV The glass of whiskey burned down my throat, but it did absolutely nothing to calm the rage boiling inside me. I sat alone at the private section of the club with my jacket beside me while loud music echoed around the room. Several women had attempted approaching me since I arrived, but one glare from me was enough to send every single one of them running away. My mind remained occupied with the disaster from earlier. Zachary, the stolen project, Celeste's involvement, and the possibility of betrayal inside my own home.

The night was quiet now—eerily quiet—except for the soft crackle of dying embers and the ragged breaths of those who had survived. Evelynn sat with her back against a fallen tree, her body trembling, every muscle aching as if the fire had hollowed her out. Her hair clung to her damp skin, tangled with ash, her palms raw from the force of the blaze. The fire inside her was quiet now, dimmed to a fragile ember, but it left her shaken—like a storm that had passed but might still return at any moment.

The sound of fire was distant and threatening, though no flames were visible. I turned around. Everything around me was ablaze. People were running, fleeing, screaming. Children ran inside houses—children who, like me, wore the same white uniform, marked with the same insignia. The uniform was no longer white; it was stained with blood. Merlin stood a few meters away, holding a burning torch. Her face was not angry. It was calm, eerily blank. — Why? — my voice was childlike, pleading. Merlin looked right through me and hurled the torch onto the porch. The fire devoured the wood with the hunger of a living beast.

He didn’t deserve it. But he ached. And in that ache, for the first time, he didn’t feel like a prince exiled. He felt like a boy who had burned the only bridge he had left. And no one was coming to put the fire out.

Camilla Gomez sacrificed everything for Darian Baldore. When he was accused of murder—a crime that could have shattered his billion-dollar empire—she took the blame, trusting his promises that he would clear her name and bring her back to him once it was safe. Instead, she was abandoned. Branded a killer. Sent to prison to rot while the man she loved moved on as if she had never existed. Worse, she was carrying his child, forced to bring new life into the world while trapped in a nightmare. Seven years later, she returns—not as a broken woman, but as a force to be reckoned with. She’s rebuilt herself and forged her own empire, and she has only one goal: to make them pay for their betrayal.

The ending created by silly words lost its weight at this point. I hovered above the bookmark sign at the top right corner of the screen before clicking on it. The menu popped up, and I chose to delete the book from my homepage. A notification popped up at the center of the screen. [Are you sure you want to delete the book? This process is irreversible.] I clicked confirm. The progress bar completed in a flash, and the book vanished without a trace from my homepage. Ding! My phone lit up. I received a text. [Processing complete. You have received 10,000,000 dollars into your bank account for completing the S-Rank mission!]

As she approached, he helped her into the saddle, then climbed onto his own. The moment their mounts galloped beyond the sanctuary gates, the fog seemed to recoil. But the woods beyond remained treacherous. As they rode, Catherine whispered enchantments to cloak their presence, while Father Emmanuel—now riding with them—recited protective scriptures beneath his breath. They were not simply traveling through land anymore. They were crossing into the spiritual battlefield. They reached the river crossing by dawn. The old bridge had collapsed under mysterious circumstances, as if clawed by something massive. Catherine knelt by the splintered wood. “This wasn’t rot. Look at the burn marks.”

He went back to his notebook. Dante picked up his wine. Brussels in January was doing its grey philosophy outside the restaurant window, and inside the table was warm with people who had built something together and were sitting in it, and the working group had recognized the methodology as sound, and the second novel was sixty-four thousand words with a cooperating third act, and in the Alentejo the garlic was underground doing its slow patient work, and in Cardiff there was a box with a note at the bottom of it, and the year was barely begun and was already, in its specific way, correct.

Her lungs were burning. It would’ve been so easy to just close her eyes and lie down, to just wait for whatever came next to envelop her and pull her from this world. She knew The Bridge was a made-up story meant to make little girls feel more hopeful about their prospects when they were being murdered. But there had to be something after this, didn’t there? Rain had a feeling she was about to find out. Her eyelids were heavy as the smoke continued to coat her insides. Mist was sprawled beside her, not choking, not even moving. Rain wasn’t even sure if she was breathing anymore.