Trust: A Novel Novels & Stories

It would always depend on chance and pure luck. As time passed in the tiny cell, it was also getting harder not succumbing to sleep. After weeks of not getting enough added to my condition, it was finally asking for detrimental. My lids became two heavy blocks of cement that I couldn't help but dropped down the rabbit hole. I looked my left and right, from the people passing by the street to the one's inside the coffee shop, then to the yellow cloud-like stain at the back of the waitress' uniform who brought our orders. Trust was a great issue to me, everyone has a motive, no one is ever innocent in the world. I blinked twice maybe even more as I tried to tune down the voice of the guy in fr

I stood at the edge of the crib and looked at him for a moment. The company The plan.... Zara Collins and Patterson and the pieces moving through the city toward the outcomes I had designed. Maya Hargrove and her eighty percent and her fiancé and the pregnancy she had denied. All of it existed.... All of it was in motion. And here, in a dim room at midnight, was this.... a small person sleeping with the absolute, uncalculated trust of someone who had decided the world was safe because the person holding them had said so. I was not accustomed to being trusted unconditionally.

he said, as his hands went onto my waist. Then my feet left the ground and I nearly squealed as he deposited me on the counter. Finally, I was at his eye level. I just sat limp, waiting for his direction. He lowered his forehead to mine and it literally took every single ounce of restraint not to pick the crumbs from his beard. They bothered me. “Trust is an extremely hard thing for me. There’s very few I completely trust. My men, my fellow Alphas. But trusting you is something completely different. I nearly killed my best friend yesterday because of you…” he trailed off.

The article had been incomplete. Most of the text was missing. But one sentence remained. “A bonded triad may become unstable if trust between its members is deliberately fractured.” Emma read the line again. And again. A slow smile spread across her face. She didn’t understand what a “bonded triad” was. She didn’t need to. She understood one word perfectly. Trust. If whatever connected Charlotte, James, and Darrien depended on trust… Then trust could be broken. Emma unlocked her phone and opened a secure messaging app.

It took me three months to get our company retreat venue down to $200 a head. All 120 people in the company thought it was a steal, and they couldn't stop telling me so. Then Chloe, the new intern, tagged me in the company group chat. "Ryan, Cookie says this lodge will do $150 a person. You quoted $200. Where did the other fifty go?" Our boss decided on the spot: "Chloe's running the retreat." And all hundred-plus people in the company decided I'd been taking kickbacks. I stared at the screen and typed two words. "Sounds good." What she didn't know was that the $200 was a family rate, one I'd earned by working three months as a server for my dad. The public price? It starts at $380

Troy “Have you tried just talking to her?” Sandra’s innocent question has me glancing in her direction. We’d all decided to meet outside Club Red, and we’re sitting around a table in one of Arson’s father’s restaurants. The guy came from an empire of fine food and dining but chose to make his way in the tech world instead. Still, it’s a nice, reasonably quiet place to sit where we can all talk. “Of course he has.” Thea’s gentle words and the way she touches Sandra’s hand takes any sting out of the statement before her attention turns to me. “She doesn’t hate you, she’s just not sure she can ever trust you. Trust is important in relationships.”

“How can I not? Our engagement was supposed to be a political move, not a death sentence.” He exhaled slowly. “Welcome to my world.” I looked up at him. “And what world is that?” His eyes met mine, dark and unreadable. “One where trust gets you killed.” A shiver ran down my spine. Damian Volkov was still a mystery to me. Cold, ruthless, unreadable. But tonight, we were bound by one undeniable truth. If we wanted to survive, we had no choice but to trust each other. Even if that trust could destroy us both.

Seraphine said nothing, she just waited. “The trust was funded by a single initial deposit from a Vale family subsidiary account,” Vivienne said. The coffee shop was quiet around them, someone at the counter ordering something, the low sound of the machine running, completely indifferent. “His name is Daniel,” Vivienne said. “He lives in New Jersey with his mother, goes to a state school, has a normal life with no idea the trust exists. Cara tells him it’s an inheritance from her grandmother.” “You found them?” Seraphine said.

“You don’t get to disappear again. Not this time.” “I won’t,” he promised. Then, his voice softened even more. “Not from you.” Dax stepped in closer, his hand coming down on my shoulder, a heavy, grounding weight. “She’ll be safe, Igor.” Igor met his gaze, and for the first time, there was no challenge there. No testing. “I know,” he said simply. “That’s why I’m able to leave.” And there it was. Trust. The rarest thing in our world, and probably the most dangerous.

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.