Historical Fiction

Part 1   The air at Fort Jackson was different. It was a world carved from concrete, steel, and suffocating testosterone. I knew it would be hard, but I hadn’t understood what ‘hard’ meant. It wasn’t just the 5 AM runs, the grueling obstacle courses, or the weight of the rucksack that cut into my…

Part 1 I saw the white-hot flash of his rage, but beneath it, I felt something else. I felt his fear. He was afraid of what I represented. Afraid of a future he couldn’t break, bend, or bully into submission. As I stood there, a mess of swamp water and humiliation, I didn’t see an…

Part 1: The Whisper in the Shadows The shop lights were off. I was just setting my wrench down in the shadows of the garage doorway when I heard it. A whisper, rising from the dark. “Please don’t kill us.” My name is Dne Forge Mercer. I’m the chapter captain. I turned slowly. In the…

Part 1 The heat hit me first. A solid wall of it, thick, wet, and smelling of ozone, hot steel, and the faint, bitter tang of failure. Then the sound. The wrong sound. Not the deep, world-moving roar of four General Electric LM2500 gas turbines, but the thin, anxious whine of auxiliary power. The sound…

Part 1 The ballroom smelled like money and perfume. It was the kind of smell that gets in your teeth. Rich, heavy, and so thick you could choke on it. Crystal chandeliers dripped light onto hundreds of people in sharp tuxedos and glittering gowns. They clinked glasses, laughed too loudly, and never, ever made eye…

Part 1 The fog in San Diego that morning was a living thing. It rolled in off the Pacific, thick and heavy, tasting of salt, rust, and the kind of cold that seeps right into your bones. It was a perfect shroud, clinging to the gray hulls of the destroyers sleeping in the harbor, muffling…

Part 1   My world was built on three things: efficiency, control, and the sterile silence of the 40th floor. At 7:00 a.m., I was a machine. As Lucas Grant, CEO of Grant Technologies, I didn’t just walk; I calculated the precise number of steps from my car to the elevator. That morning, the air…

My name is Maya Collins, and four years ago, I was one paycheck away from being on the street. It’s not an exaggeration. It’s a fact. I was a 28-year-old single mother to a four-year-old girl named Lily. Her father had vanished the moment the pregnancy test showed positive, leaving me with a mountain of…

The art of feeling nothing… that was my masterpiece. My name is Nicholas Hartwell. I’m 43 years old, and my net worth is valued at slightly over $10.8 billion. I tell you this not to brag, but to explain my reality. My reality is a fortress. It’s built of numbers, data points, and ruthless efficiency….

I was on my knees, scrubbing the hallway floor, when a small voice cut through the monotonous scrape of the sponge. “Excuse me, Ma’am.” At 35, I, Caroline Mitchell, had cleaned countless schools, offices, and buildings in the three years since my husband died. I’d mastered the art of being invisible, working efficiently while the…

My name is David Hartley. I’m 57 years old, and for the last four years, I’ve been a ghost. I live on the 42nd floor of a building I own. From my corner office, I can see the entire city skyline—a monument to the three decades I spent building Hartley Property Group. I have everything…

My name is Dominic Rossi. You don’t know me, and that’s by design. I’m the man in the corner of the coffee shop, the guy in the gray sedan, the shadow you’d never look at twice. For the last fifteen years, my entire life has been dedicated to one principle: protecting the Vance family. Not…