Elara frowned, confusion warring with the lingering fear. “What are you talking about? He’s… he’s a software engineer. He works at TechCorp.” The Director shook his head. “That’s the cover story. Mark is involved in something… far more complex and dangerous than you can imagine. We’ve been monitoring him for months.” “Monitoring him?” Elara repeated, her…
Month: January 2026
I slipped into my house through the back door, locked it silently behind me, and crept upstairs. Lily’s bedroom was pristine. The bed was made with military precision. The desk was organized, pencils aligned by height. It was the room of a girl who was trying desperately to control her environment because she couldn’t control…
I lay there, my body rigid. Every creak of the house settling sounded like a gunshot. 9:00 a.m. Nothing. My legs were beginning to go numb. Doubt began to gnaw at me. I’m paranoid, I thought. I’m a crazy mother spying on her innocent daughter. Mrs. Greene is just senile. 9:20 a.m. CLICK. The sound…
He just closed the door and turned off the porch light and left me standing there in the dark. I walked three miles to my aunt Rachel’s house. She was my mother’s sister, the black sheep of the family because she’d moved away and married a man my grandparents didn’t approve of and generally refused…
I knew when my father retired. I knew when they moved to a smaller place. I knew Vanessa had dropped out of college after her sophomore year, though I never found out why. I hadn’t seen these people in 19 years. And suddenly they’re on my doorstep like nothing happened. I let them in. Not…
My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I knew that car. I knew the man inside. And I knew that in exactly sixty seconds, my family’s entire world—the façade of perfection they had built on a foundation of lies—was going to go up in flames. My name is Maya Vance. For most of my…
I met Caleb at a seed convention in a dusty hall in Iowa. He was wearing flannel and work boots, his hands calloused and stained with soil. He was talking about regenerative farming with a passion that made the air around him vibrate. He didn’t look like money. He looked like the earth itself. To…
I knew nothing about this until a week earlier. I was in the middle of changing Ethan’s diaper when my phone rang. A government official introduced himself, his tone grave and respectful. I thought he was a telemarketer or a prankster until he sent over his credentials. He told me that my actions during the…
The name hit me like a physical blow, spinning me backward through time. Julian Hartwell. He had been Julian Blackwood when I knew him, before he dropped his father’s toxic name and built his own legacy from ash and will. Julian, who had held me while I wept over the child we lost. Julian, whose father had systematically…
Then, the garage light snapped on. It was harsh, clinical, spilling out onto the driveway. My father-in-law’s silhouette moved behind the frosted glass of the side door. Marcus. A man who wore three-piece suits to Sunday brunch and spoke of charity with a glass of scotch in hand. The movement was wrong—too sharp, too aggressive. Then…