Secret History Novel Novels & Stories

She could not rely on Ethan’s version of truth anymore. Dust swirled in the beam of her flashlight. She pushed aside cracked picture frames, winter coats eaten by moths, boxes of old letters. Then, tucked inside a wooden chest carved with strange symbols, she found another secret. It was not clothes this time, nor a photograph. It was a leather bound book wrapped in red ribbon. The ribbon was stained darker in places, as though it had once been wet with blood. Her hands shook as she untied it. Inside were handwritten pages, her mother’s script looping and sharp. But these were not recipes or family notes. These were oaths, histories, secrets. The title at the top of the first page froze Oliv

My curious ever probing mind got me wondering what she actually wanted me to do for her. I kept shaking off those probing thoughts from my head, but it intensified when Mrs. Hartley walked past her room. Huh? She kept walking towards the end of the hall. Her steps slow, getting me more piqued. Finally, she came to a stop in one of the room at the end of the hall. She took out a key from her sleeve, unlocked the door and went into the room, leaving at the door step perplexed by how she could hide a key in her sleeve without it falling out.

They were already suspicious of me and I couldn’t risk it. The library had floor-to-ceiling shelves, thick with the scent of old paper and cedar polish. A quiet, forgotten room. It suited Victor—a man who seemed to thrive in silence, buried beneath layers of legacy and restraint. But even silent places had secrets, and I was getting good at pulling those apart. Hopefully, I'm able to do this one before the time runs out I moved to the back wall, where the older books were. Politics. History. Ledgers. The usual placeholders for the real things people didn’t want found.

This was my haven, a secret space where no one could find me—away from everything, from the pressures of my role, from the expectations that weighed on me. In my hands, I held the book I had stolen from the secret library. It was bound in dark leather, and its pages crackled with age. I had barely managed to slip it from its hidden resting place without anyone noticing, and now I was finally going to read it. The title was unassuming, but the stories it held, the knowledge it promised, stirred something deep within me.

And the way he looked at her — like she was the air he hadn’t breathed in years — burned straight through me. Someone beside me whispered, “Guess the boss finally found his heart.” I smiled back like it didn’t hurt. But inside, it felt like something inside me cracked open. Seven years ago, Giovanni and Elena were the golden couple—a Mafia prince and the diplomat’s daughter who supposedly left him to save her family. People said her father was threatened, that she ran to France for safety. But people who run for their lives don’t send postcards from Paris. He called it betrayal. She called it sacrifice.

Maybe this was a side he’d kept hidden from her, a side that only came out when he was alone? The bookshelf too, was full of clues to Jacob’s secret. The Story of O . Billionaire Blackmail . Fifty Shades of Grey . Delta of Venus . Books by the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher Masoch. The Marketplace . Every book Emily selected was erotica. She wished she’d found this stash years ago. How exciting would those evenings alone have been then?

Some of them read multiple times judging by the cracking of the binding. History. Military strategy. Economics. Law. Psychology. Philosophy. One entire shelf of biographies of powerful men across different centuries and continents. And then something that surprised me. Fiction. A whole section of it tucked into the far corner like something private. Novels. Some of them old enough that the titles had faded. I pulled one out carefully. A Russian novel. Thick. Dense. The kind of book that required patience and silence and the willingness to sit inside discomfort for extended periods.

He knows..... William pov Getting home I saw the package Nathaniel was talking about. I opened it and it was a picture of I and Jade on our first date. On top was written: I know your secret. Shit! He knows! Is that why he is intentionally keeping Jade around? To hurt us? Does he know that I was the one who drove the car? I didn't waste anytime, I rushed to my former work place to check the case again. Was he at the scene? If he was why didn't he say anything?

Rachel would never know the truth, she would never inherit what Evelyn left behind. That had been the plan, a perfect plan. Until Evelyn started leaving pieces behind, the letter, the videos, the hidden messages, and the twelve secrets. I walked toward the window. Outside, the city continued moving, people laughed, cars passed, life continued as if nothing had changed. But I knew better, a war had already started, and I was losing control. Slowly, I picked up my phone again, my thumb hovered over the contact I had never deleted, a name I had hoped I would never need. Vincenzo Rosetti.

The second strategist followed shortly afterward, leaving me alone at the long wooden table with several open boxes and more history than I could organise in one afternoon. Outside the windows, Seattle had begun disappearing beneath the rain. The grey water and darker sky seemed to blend into one another, while the warmth of the library made the rest of the hotel feel distant. I became so absorbed in reading an old letter that I didn’t hear anyone approach. A coffee cup appeared beside my hand. I looked up to find Ethan standing across from me. He had removed his jacket and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt to his forearms. “Peace offering,” he said.