The Illusion Of Us Novels & Stories

"You just haven't had anything worth my time until now." Several of them laughed at me while one of them muttered something in Italian I decided to ignore. Don Iosef leaned his elbows on his knees, fingers wrapped around each other. "We told you all those years ago that you had to obey the rules, keep your cock in line. And most of all—defend the illusion we struggled so hard to maintain." "Yet here we are," another of them growled, slamming a printed copy of the article that’d just come out. "Your little secret's now public entertainment."

She had felt as though she was being skinned alive and then cut to pieces. Selene couldn't bring herself to tell Hilda the truth. If she were being honest with herself, she was greatly traumatized by the thought of forming a pact again. That kind of pain was worse than death. It was worse than being torn apart by beasts. Still, she needed another excuse to respond to her parents right now. Giggling impishly, she said, "You're overthinking it, Mother. I have no interest in becoming a beast tamer. I just think the wolfman is handsome. He's so strong and well-built. I like having him for gawking purposes."

I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been wound until we stepped off campus and the noise shifted, from anxious murmurs and last-minute cramming to laughter, complaints, and that loose, relieved energy that only comes after something awful is over. Taylor stretched dramatically beside me, arms thrown wide like he was embracing the entire street. “Freedom,” he announced. “I can feel my brain cells regenerating.” “You’re assuming they survived,” I said. He clutched his chest. “Cruel. Absolutely cruel.”

Saturday crept in like a whispered apology. Sunlight spilled through the blinds, warm and soft, but Maya kept her face buried in the pillow. She didn’t want light. She didn’t want warmth. She wanted silence, stillness—nothingness. The sting of slush on her neck still lingered in her skin, even after three showers and a bottle of detergent. But worse than that was the soundless weight of shame. No words. No comfort. Just the echo of laughter in the hallways, and that damn photo that refused to disappear from her head.

“Spoken like a man with something to hide.” “Maybe.” The rest of the room feels too still. The hum of the refrigerator, the muted city outside. It all fades behind the sound of our breathing. Alex breaks it first, talking about some mutual friend, some deal he’s working on, but I barely listen. My mind’s already drifting. Olivia’s face keeps flashing in pieces, her laugh, her quiet way of overthinking everything, the softness she hides behind her stubbornness. She doesn’t deserve to be at the centre of all this, caught between the deception of men.

All puppeteers of chaos wearing clean suits and expensive smiles. We control what the world sees, and my father controls the men who make sure it stays that way. Now, he’s passing it all to me. The company. The influence. The blood oath. There’s no time for distractions. I rub a hand over my jaw, staring at the city through the glass. From up here, it looks peaceful. The streets below, the people, they have no idea how much of their world belongs to us. But peace is an illusion. Because every empire needs an enemy.

"I think about the people I used to be. Every version of myself that had to wear a mask, that had to keep a secret, that had to play a part. Those people had friends, I suppose, but they were friends with a shadow. When we chose this, we didn't lose anything real. We just stopped pretending." That struck a chord in me. It was the absolute truth. The 'us' that existed before Oakhaven was a collection of survival strategies and carefully curated lies. We hadn't left behind a rich, fulfilling life; we had left behind a performance. And the audience for that performance had been just as fake as the show.

Us sleeping peacefully, like the world wasn’t falling apart. Another message appeared. **All of you.** I stared at the screen.Then another. **Would be a shame if the wrong person saw how happy you were.** My stomach dropped. I immediately sent it to the group chat. The replies came almost instantly. Mason: Where did they get that? Kai: This isn’t someone trying to scare us anymore. Lila: What do they want? I didn’t have an answer. None of us did. We met at the rink after everyone left.

Ch 55: Iris After a round of texting. He does a lecture on modernism tradgedues, including the death of a salesman and the Great Gatsby, expanding on how they became tradgedues. She takes the initiative to answer this time when he asks a question, stating that their beliefs were flawed. They believed in the great illusion of a dream, whether it was love, wealth, believing that if they worked hard enough chasing that illusion, it'll bear fruit. He looks disconcerted and argued that some dreams are worth chasing after. She states that the illusion of happiness shouldn't be . She thinks back to her past and the illusion of family she once had with her parents, a feeling she once thought would n

I'm full with the joy of spending this weekend with this beautiful and wonderful people over here. What matters is that we all are together at last.we are " CRAZY BEAUTIFUL US"