Novel In God We Trust Novels & Stories

I nodded mainly because I had no choice now. AUTHOR’S NOTE A car fire. A sour smell. A driver who didn’t resist when he was accused. Sometimes betrayal doesn’t look like daggers in the dark; it looks like someone lowering their eyes and saying nothing. So tell me, readers… Would you rather trust too easily and risk being burnt alive, or suspect everyone until you’re completely alone? Pick your poison. Yours in plotting, Zera

Quincy There’s a saying you hear around here by your second or third week, whispered like a prayer and carved into the back of your head whether you like it or not: Don’t trust anyone. Not your cellmate. Not the guy who trades you cookies for soap. Not the guards, the chaplain, the janitor, not even the rat outside the laundry hall. Trust gets you shanked. Trust gets you stripped. Trust gets you dead. I thought I understood that. And I had defiled that law once with my cellmate.

I had always believed that the world worked in a way that was predictable, at least when it came to business. You trusted people who had earned your trust, and you dealt with enemies who threatened what you had built. But when Joshua Lawson reappeared in my life, and everything I had worked for seemed on the verge of unraveling, I was forced to reconsider everything I thought I knew. Trust, it turned out, wasn’t always about loyalty—it was about survival.

The worst of mine waited on the other side of dawn. “Sleep,” he said, mouth at my hair. “We hunt better with clear eyes.” I laced my fingers through his and let the quiet take me. Not clean, not simple, but held. And for the first time since the email to Leo, since the reporter in the corridor, since the notes I’d thrown into a digital fire, I believed something outrageous: Maybe trust isn’t a brittle thing you either keep or break. Maybe it’s a room you keep building together—beam by beam, night after night—stronger than the last place you lived, and safer than any secret.

TRUST IS THE NERVOUS SYSTEM THAT TELLS THE CITY ITS HANDS ARE CLEAN. Julian whispers, “That’s cheerful.” Sarah flicks him one hard look and he shuts up. Leo continues. TRUST DOESN'T JUST OPEN DOORS. IT RECORDS CONSENT. PREDICTS COMPLIANCE. FEEDS RESIDENTIAL ROUTINES. IT IS WHY PEOPLE THINK THEY CHOSE THE ROOM THEY WERE ASSIGNED. The screen stutters. For half a second the text becomes machine garbage, columns of symbols too fast for my eyes, then clears.

Riley Trust is a muscle. If you don’t use it, it atrophies. If someone ties it to a post and sets it on fire, it grows back mean. By the time we crossed the northern ridge and the palace’s black spires rose out of the fog like patient knives, my trust was a scar that refused to bend. I had a blade up my sleeve, a blade in my boot, and a blade where my smile should’ve been. In the mornings I trained until my lungs burned; at night I lay still as stone and waited for the light in the ceiling to move like a hand.

And we sure as hell don't forgive. We get even. And we make traitors pay a price they can't afford. At dawn, I walked into the study and opened the safe only I knew the code to. Inside were all the confidential files on Vincent's business dealings—as his wife, I had access to everything. I took a photo of every single document. Game on.

I asked, my voice steady. Elias offered a smile, but it was a cold one. “I expect you to trust us.” Maxwell scoffed beside me. “That’s not how trust works.” Elias’s gaze finally settled on Maxwell, his features inscrutable. “You have been extraordinarily vocal for someone with no seat at this table.” Maxwell gritted his teeth, his muscles stiff with adrenaline. “That’s because I don’t trust a goddamn one of you.”

“It feels too big… too old… like I’m opening a door I can’t close.” “You don’t have to do it alone.” I turned then. His eyes met mine, unguarded for once, he didn't hold anything back, there was no mask, it was Just a man offering something he didn’t know how to name. Trust, or maybe… absolution. I closed the book carefully, the pages rustling like wind through old trees, I clutched it to my chest. This was no longer just history, it was a weapon, it was a map to my rebirth.

It was strange how much that simple truth moved me. “Do you think they’ll really trust it?” I asked quietly. “This new order… after everything the old one did?” Kael’s hand brushed mine again, his fingers warm and steady. “They will because it’s not about trusting a system this time, it’s about trusting each other and they trust you, Elara.” I wanted to believe that. The faces in the crowd, the old, the young, the scarred, the tired, looked up at us like we were something worth believing in but trust, like peace, was fragile. It took only one lie to break it.