Chapter 898: The Sinners: The Wall Was Innocent

Actually, visibly combusting from shame—self-immolating right there on the kitchen tile while the rest of us pretended not to notice the human bonfire.

The only thing missing was someone throwing a marshmallow into the flames.

Emma’s wheeze graduated to a snort.

One single, traitorous, volcanic snort that detonated in the kitchen like a flashbang laced with pure evil.

The kind of sound that didn’t just expose her—it

testified against her in court.

Sarah’s head whipped up from behind the counter.

Her eyes—wide, wild, absolutely feral with mortification—locked onto her twin with the heat-seeking precision of a woman who had identified the enemy and was prepared to escalate to thermonuclear sibling warfare.

She didn’t look like a girl who’d spilled juice.

She looked like a woman who’d spilled her dignity, her sanity, and a good portion of her future inheritance.

"Don’t," Sarah hissed. "Don’t you DARE—"

"I’m not—" Emma’s voice was three octaves too high.

Tears were genuinely pouring down her face. Her entire body was vibrating like a tuning fork struck by God Himself—possibly with a personal grudge against the Carter family bloodline.

"I’m not laughing, I have—I have

hiccups

—"

"Those are

NOT

hiccups—"

"Very sudden—

hic

—very involuntary—

hic

—"

"Emma, I swear to

GOD

—"

"Something funny?"

Linda’s voice floated from the stove. Calm. So calm... the ocean floor right before the tectonic plates shift and a tsunami devours a coastal city, complete with souvenir keychains, overpriced "I Survived Breakfast" T-shirts, and a gift shop playlist of whale songs remixed into passive-aggressive elevator music.

That voice didn’t ask a question... notarized by the International Court of Maternal Wrath, and delivered via certified carrier pigeon straight to the amygdala.

"No ma’am," Emma managed, in the strangled register of someone whose airway was being choked by their own amusement while simultaneously trying to file for political asylum inside her own ribcage. "Nothing. Nothing at all.

Just—allergies.

And hiccups. Both. At the same time. Very common condition, actually—"

"Is it."

"Medical science is still studying it. Peer-reviewed journals. Double-blind trials. The works."

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. Stared at my bacon. The bacon stared back. Even the bacon was struggling—looking at me like

bro, you did this to yourself, don’t look at me for sympathy, I’m just crispy meat trying to live my best life while quietly judging your life choices

.

Linda set a plate in front of Sarah—who had returned from the floor, clutching salt shaker shards and the remnants of her self-respect like war trophies from a battle she had decisively, catastrophically, and publicly lost in front of an audience of one mother, one twin sister, and one man who was currently trying not to laugh so hard he aspirated coffee.

Their eyes met.

It lasted one second.

One thermonuclear, extinction-level, mother-daughter second.

Linda’s face

:

I know what you said. I know what you were doing. I know what you claimed you could do better. We will discuss this. In detail. When I have decided whether you remain in my will—or whether I simply feed your inheritance to the neighbor’s goldfish, who at least has the decency not to scream orgasmic performance reviews.

Sarah’s face

:

I am going to die. I am going to die right here at this breakfast table and I welcome it because death is preferable to this moment and also please God let the floor open up and swallow me whole before the next pancake lands, preferably with a side of amnesia, a new identity, and a one-way ticket to anywhere that isn’t this zip code.

Sarah broke eye contact so fast her neck cracked audibly—like a small-caliber gunshot in a library.

Her face plunged toward her plate like a submarine executing an emergency dive during a depth-charge attack.

She shoved an entire forkful of eggs into her mouth—a portion so large it distorted her cheeks into

chipmunk

geometry—and chewed with the desperate energy of someone who had decided that if her mouth was full, she couldn’t be expected to speak, and if she couldn’t speak, maybe reality would take the hint and end, or at least fast-forward to the part where she’s legally an adult living in another country under a new name and a

fake mustache

.

Emma "hiccupped" again.

Sarah kicked her under the island. Hard enough that Emma yelped and the stool scraped six inches across the tile like it was trying to escape the blast radius.

"HICCUP," Emma announced loudly, rubbing her shin. "BIG hiccup. Moved my whole body. Wow. Wild. Practically seismic."

I pressed my napkin to my face. Pretending to wipe my mouth.

And at the far end of the island—occupying a stool that might as well have been in a different dimension, possibly one with better Wi-Fi and fewer emotional landmines—

Jasmine Carter

sipped her coffee and observed everything with the polite bewilderment of an alien anthropologist studying a species she didn’t fully understand.

But was beginning to suspect might be clinically insane.

She’d come downstairs ten minutes ago, showered and smiling and completely unbothered, and walked into a kitchen that was operating at a psychic frequency she didn’t have the clearance for.

Three people who couldn’t look at each other.

One person cooking like she was preparing for war crimes tribunal catering.

One person who’d apparently had an allergic hiccup seizure that required immediate medical evacuation.

And one person whose face was so deep in her plate she appeared to be performing CPR on her breakfast in the hopes it would rise again and save her from this hellscape.

"Good morning!" Jasmine had said, bright and warm.

The silence that had followed could have been bottled and sold as a weapon—probably under the brand name

"Carter Family Silence: Now With Extra Judgment."

Now she sat there—watching the loaded glances, the stifled laughs, the kicked shins, the aggressive pancake-flipping—and made a decision that showcased real survival instincts.

She didn’t ask.

Months away. That’s what it was. She’d been away for months, and this family had—evolved? Mutated?

Developed an entire ecosystem of secrets and inside references and silent communications that operated on channels she wasn’t tuned into.

Whatever had happened between last night and this morning—whatever had turned Sarah into a puddle of shame, Emma into a broken laugh machine, Linda into a breakfast-cooking weapon of mass destruction, and ME into a man who found walls architecturally riveting—it was family business she hadn’t earned access to.

She’d catch up. Or she wouldn’t. The coffee was excellent. That was enough for now.

"These pancakes are really good, Linda," Jasmine offered into the silence.

"Thank you," Linda said.

Emma hiccupped.

Sarah kicked her again.

"OW—I mean—

hic

—"

And I—Peter Carter, Emperor of the Harem, architect of impossible situations, the man who had

bedded both daughters and impregnated OUR mother

and was now eating her accusatory bacon—stared at the wall and thought:

Best. Breakfast. Ever.

****

ARIA had delivered the car this morning.

Materialized it in the driveway like it had always been there—sleek, obsidian, aggressive in the way only cars engineered by a literal goddess could be. The interior smelled like new leather and divine intervention. The dashboard display recognized my face before I touched anything. The engine didn’t so much start as awaken, a low, predatory purr.

Linda sat in the passenger seat.

Arms crossed. Jaw set. Eyes forward.

She had the energy of a woman who had been loading ammunition for the last forty-five minutes and was now ready to fire—possibly from the hip, possibly with both barrels, definitely without remorse.

I pulled out of the driveway. Smooth. Silent. ARIA’s engineering making the car almost float over the asphalt like it had a personal grudge against friction and gravity in general.

We made it to the end of the street.

"So."

Linda’s voice was conversational. Bright, almost. The brightness of a spotlight in an interrogation room that also happened to be a war crimes tribunal.

"How does it feel?"

"How does what feel?"

"Oh, you know." She waved a hand—casual, breezy, a woman asking about the weather on the surface of the sun. "All of it.

You’ve got all my daughters now

. Both of them. And the mother..." She placed a hand on her belly. Smiled.

The smile of a shark who had learned human expressions from a textbook written by Machiavelli. "The mother is pregnant.

Mmm.

How does that feel, I wonder?"

I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel. "Mom—"

"No, no, I’m genuinely curious." She shifted in her seat to face me, crossing her legs with the deliberate energy of a prosecutor approaching the bench after already winning the case.

"Oh, the great Emperor of the Harem has accomplished what no man in recorded history has even attempted. Not only

fucked the whole family

—and I mean the

WHOLE

family, Peter, every single woman who shares a roof with me—but got the mother pregnant while both her daughters are begging for his cock on a nightly basis."

The word

cock

delivered in Linda Carter’s registered-nurse,

seen-it-all, raised-three-teenagers-and-survived

voice was a weapon of mass destruction. It didn’t land—it detonated. Clinical and furious and dripping with enough irony to fill a swimming pool, then poison it.

"’Begging’ is a strong word—"

"

IS it?

" She turned the full weight of her attention on me. "Because from what I heard at 2 AM, Peter—and I heard

PLENTY

—

’begging’

might actually be conservative. What was it Sarah said? She could ’ride you better than Mom’? Is that accurate? Is that a direct quote? Because it

SOUNDED

pretty direct at the volume she was delivering it."