Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Something old? The script we live by.
Something new? His best friend in my bed. Something borrowed? The time he has left.
Something blue? The color of his corpse once I’m through.
Most people run from their nightmares. I married mine.
This marriage was supposed to be simple. A target. A timeline. A story.
I was never supposed to want Asher Jameson.
Five years younger, a famous snowboarder with millions of fans, he showed up the day after I sealed my vows and slowly became everything I didn't know I needed. My soulmate in a best friend.
Until he went distant.
Now we're all heading to Veilarath, the winter island where folklore runs deeper than the snow. I should be happy when my husband tells me Asher is coming. But he doesn’t come alone. He brings his new fiancée.
It doesn’t matter that my closest friends are all here too. It doesn’t matter that he’s not quite the Asher I thought I knew.
What matters?
He’s mine.
Now the script we live by is burning, my best friend is in her bed, the time we all have left is running out, and I’m about to learn that the only thing more dangerous than the life I live…
is Asher Jameson Delacroix
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
"When you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off knives.” –
Lauren Eden
Désamour, France
November, Date unknown
It reeked of splintered wood and sins too ancient to name. Sins that never got forgiven—just shoved into drawers and forgotten. The kids waited their turn outside like always. Knees jackhammering. Mouths sealed. Eyes too wide, too hungry. Listening to adults drop their voices when they thought only God could hear.
God, and whoever crouched behind the mesh screen.
“Bless me, Father,” a man said, voice thick. “I’ve heard things."
His breath snagged. Rosary beads clicked once, then stopped.
“Who?” the priest asked, but he knew deep down what was coming.
A pause.
“The House.”
The children didn’t know which house.
Some families didn't need street names. They had titles. They had rules. They had permission to reach into your chest and rearrange your organs.
The adults whispered la maison du mal when they thought the walls had ears. Said it while spitting on the ground and crossing themselves, like naming it meant they weren't already dead.
Three branches. One root. One poison running through all of them.
A garden in France, someone once whispered. A place that grew beauty like a threat. The priest didn't care what they whispered, so long as it kept them all away from Désamour.
“Delacroix," he said, as if it were nothing.
The priest flinched like the name had hands.
“And the others?” the priest asked, because curiosity gets holy men killed. "What have you heard?"
The children sat right out the door. He wondered if they were listening, they probably were. They didn’t know words like surveillance or intel yet. They just knew the feeling of being looked at, even when no one was there.
It was the priests job to ensure no one ever heard of them here. Especially in Désamour. He would need to form a way around this.
The man cleared his throat. “They have a book, Father—"
The priest’s hand slams against the wood between them—crack—like a gunshot in the cramped dark. “Enough.”
His voice isn’t soft anymore. It’s gravel and communion wine gone sour. The man jerks back; the rosary drops, clatters, stills.
“I know,” the priest says. Breath sawing. “I know what book. I know what they write in it. I know whose names are inked in blood that never dries.”
He leans forward, forehead almost brushing the lattice, eyes wild with something older than scripture. “You think confession buys you safety? Speaking their words out loud is a invitation. They hear. Always.”
The man opens his mouth—no sound. Just the wet click of fear.
Outside, the children freeze. One girl—barely ten, shoes too big, eyes too old—presses her ear harder to the door. Her pulse hammers against the wood like a second heart.
The priest lowers his voice, barely wind. “You breathe their business outside this box, and they will carve you into lessons. Not just you. Your wife. Your boy. Your mother’s grave.” He swallows, throat clicking. “They’ll make you watch while they rewrite your bloodline.”
The man’s hands shake so hard the kneeler rattles. “I—I didn’t mean—”
“Then stop.” The priest’s fingers curl through the screen, a warning. “Forget the codex. Forget the families. Forget you ever heard la mason du mal whispered like a lullaby. You carry their name past this door, you carry a target.”
The candlewax has gone brittle. Fear pools underneath the pews like spilled communion wine.
The priest exhales, slow, controlled. “Absolution’s not mine to give for this. Only silence is. Swear it.”
He nods, frantic. “I swear. On my son—on—”
“Don’t swear on anything you love.” The priest’s eyes glitter. “They collect those.”
He slides the screen shut. Darkness swallows the man’s face, but his breathing is loud, ragged, alive.
Behind the door, the girl pulls away. Her palm is sweaty against the oak. Inside her chest, something new takes root—not fear, not exactly. A seed shaped like a question.
She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already written in the book.
They all are.
They just haven’t turned the page.
The priest tried to recover his spine. “And Le Boucher?”
Silence.
Then, barely audible—“That one isn’t theirs.”
The priest’s fingers tightened on the rosary.
“Everyone belongs to the House,” the priest said, like belief could work as armor.
“Not him,” the man replied. “He doesn’t do jobs. He does corrections.”
A scrape of fabric.
The man shifted, leaning so close to the screen the priest smelled expensive cologne and cold sweat. Rich men always wore their fear like perfume. They thought it made them untouchable.
It just made them easier to find.
“They call him Le Boucher like it’s a joke,” the man said. “Like it makes sense. Like he’s some tradesman doing a job.”
The priest opened his mouth. No sound came out.
“Boucher's cut meat,” the man continued. “They follow lines. They leave something recognizable behind.”
“He doesn’t cut,” the man said. “He takes you apart until no one can tell what you were.”
The priest's own voice was a rasp. “Why tell me this?”