Crash & Burn Book Novels & Stories

Chapter 6: My first side hustle November 5, 2019. It was the Fifth of November, still in the year of 2019. I was seated next to my father’s hospital bed. It had been two agonizing weeks since he got burnt in the fire. And he was still unconscious. Despite the tireless efforts of the medical staff, he remained ensnared in the grips of a deep and unyielding coma. The doctors didn’t know if he would survive or not.

Instead, he straightens and stares down at me, his expression unreadable. "You’ll live right here with me," he declares. "And what precisely do I benefit from that?" I snapped, crossing my palms. "My safety," he replies without hesitation. "And my coverage. We each realize you’re drowning inside the muddy waters of the global business." He’s proper, and he knows it. My fledgling company is on the brink of crumbling, and the demise threats I’ve been receiving haven’t helped. "How do you already know all this?" I ask warily.

I grew up fatherless, clawing my way through the Chicago underbelly with my mom. She always said he loved us. That he just had to go far, far away. Until she got terminally ill. I dropped out of design school and rushed back, ready to drain our life savings to treat her. But she put a pair of scissors to her own throat. She told me not to touch the cash. It was the only thing she had to leave me. I pretended to agree. But the second I turned around, I took our fifty grand and ran to Mr. Sal, the neighborhood's back-alley doctor. I begged him to save her. "Fifty grand? This buys her three months. Tops." He lit a cigarette. Through the smoke, his eyes bored into me. Like he was looking at a gh

When my husband from the arranged marriage lost his memory, I couldn't resist messing with him. “Adrian. Say 'Boss.'“ The man in the hospital bed hugged his pillow and looked up at me like a good little boy. “Boss.” I nodded, satisfied. Perfect. A whole year of marriage, and he never once called me his wife. One car crash, and he'd been demoted to calling me Boss. Adrian and I had an arranged marriage. I did it for my family's dying factory. After the wedding he was colder than the fridge. We slept in separate rooms. He wouldn't eat my cooking and wouldn't take my calls. He even saved my number in his phone as “the Bell girl.” I lived in the Crane house more carefully than the hired

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.

I whispered, slamming the slagged iron down onto the open page of the leather book. The Ledger of the Scar I didn't write a line of text. I used the heat of the molten iron to burn a hole straight through the center of the manuscript. The effect was an instantaneous, systemic shockwave. The valley didn't freeze; it recoiled. The iron Enforcers froze mid-strike, their hydraulic lines locking up as the text that authorized their existence was physically incinerated in the leather book.

She'd spent eight years in the eastern communications division of what remained of The Meridian's network — the portion that had survived the initial collapse by moving quickly and operating under new organizational skin, the adaptation of criminal organizations being one of their most reliable features. She had found the foundation through the novel's acknowledgment, as Catalina had said she would. She had read the note three times in a single sitting and then read the entire novel and then called the contact number at eleven PM on a Thursday, which Dante answered because he was awake and because the calls came to his phone specifically.

I interrupted. Her cheeks went red, and her eyes brightened. With a groan, I shook my head. My wolf was growling at me even before I said, “It’s not worth crying over.” The book blew up. Every page lit on fire as it burst outward, flying in every direction. A chunk of the flaming spine hit me square in my chest. I batted it away, yelping in shock. There was a slight burn where it’d hit me, but nothing bad. I stomped out the flames and made my way to the other bits of burning paper, putting out the fires.

Thick black smoke drifted down the street, stinging my eyes and filling my lungs with the suffocating smell of burning wood and melted plastic. I looked at it for a moment as I stopped dead in my tracks. Orange flames were bursting through the shattered glass of my living room window, licking wildly up the side of the brick building. Everything I owned…my clothes, my childhood notebooks, the few precious photo albums I had left of my parents, the memories of a life I was desperately trying to rebuild was all going up in ash right in front of me. Panic seized me completely, as I tried to hold back tears. "No! No, no, no!"

It meant I still had time to take control of the project. Crash. A book suddenly fell from the shelf. I frowned. “Strange.” I walked over and picked it up. Book of Finance. That was the title printed on the cover. Something slipped from between the pages. A photograph. I pulled it out slowly. But before I could look closely— A hand suddenly snatched it away. “What—” I looked up quickly. But I was sure of what I had seen. A baby picture. “What’s wrong with—” I began, reaching for it.