Apartment

From the time I was ten until I turned eighteen, my parents made me write 299 IOUs. Every time I needed money, I had to borrow it and pay it back as an adult. Then I got into a car accident. I needed money for surgery but was still short by 3,000. With no other options, I went to my parents for help. But they just gave me cold smiles. “Clara, you’re eighteen now. We have no obligation to give you money anymore. If you need it, write another IOU.” While holding back tears, I wrote my 300th IOU. After my surgery, I saw my adopted sister’s social media post. In the pictures, she was celebrating her 18th birthday on a cruise. She was the center of attention, like a princess. My parents had given her a luxury apartment in the city and a Maserati as birthday gifts. Even my childhood friend was looking at her with love in his eyes. She said they were the ones she loved and thanked them for giving her the best of everything. I looked down at the crumpled IOU in my hand and suddenly laughed. Once I paid off my debt, I would no longer need such a family.

/Completed/His eyes fully turned bright red and lethal, the dark grey fog surrounding him as he rose on his feet. Black pointed sharp claws jutted out of his fingers. His skin appeared paler than usual as he stared right into my soul."W-What are...you?" I questioned, my lips trembling in fear."Daemonuim rex" He hissed, his claws disappearing. I froze in my seat as those words echoed in my ears. I know what he meant. Demon King. ***Talia wanted an adventure. Working two jobs and living in a dump for an apartment does that to you. When her friend drags her to the club, she is excited at the prospect of meeting someone new. That’s how she meets Lukas, the handsome stranger at the bar who beds her and leaves the next morning. Her entire life changes because of that one night.From finding out she's demons mate, who’s pregnant with the first half-demon child to ridiculously dressed fairies showing up at her door, getting abducted by the guy with a spear, her life becomes an adventure she wished she never asked. ***

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

All her life, Sofia believed her father was an honorable man. Until one night, armed men burst into her apartment, and a cursed name was spoken in a voice like steel: Marco Vallardi. “Your father stole millions from us,” said the feared mafia boss with a dangerous smile. “And now, you’re going to pay it back.” Sofia Russo, a brilliant but naïve accountant, is forced to work for the most feared man in New York. What begins as a matter of survival soon turns into something darker... and far more dangerous. Marco isn’t just her enemy—he’s her only ally in a world of betrayal, blood money, and buried family secrets. As she unravels her father’s past, Sofia uncovers something more deadly than any debt: someone inside the Vallardi family is leaking information to their ruthless rivals, the Cortez. And the traitor’s face is far more familiar than she ever expected. He offered her a threat. She gave him a choice. Now, they’re bound by far more than numbers. And in a world where love can be as lethal as a bullet, Sofia must decide whether to save Marco… or save herself.

Ayla Monroe’s life shatters the night she returns home to find her apartment ransacked — and herself abducted by strangers in black suits. The reason? Her reckless brother Mason has vanished after stealing two million dollars from the D'Argento Syndicate — the most feared criminal empire in New York. And now, Lucian D’Argento wants payment. But money isn’t what he’s after. Lucian, the cold and calculating mafia enforcer known only in whispers as the “ghost advisor,” gives Ayla an ultimatum: work for him for six months to repay the debt — or disappear like her brother. He wants her mind. Her gift. Her ability to break ciphers, read patterns, and strategize like a war general. What begins as forced servitude soon evolves into a twisted game of power, secrets, and slow-burning obsession. Ayla is determined to find her brother and destroy Lucian’s empire from the inside. But every move she makes pulls her deeper into a world of blood, betrayal, and temptation. As walls close in and loyalties shift, Ayla faces an impossible truth: Sometimes the devil doesn’t take your soul. He teaches you how to burn with it.

On the very first day Jason and I made our relationship official, he insisted on handing over his salary for me to manage. He said marriage was only a matter of time and that he trusted his future wife to keep the money safe. On the day of our engagement, Jason demanded that I hand over the $960,000 in salary I had “kept” for him over the past four years. “Each month, I gave you $20,000. In four years, that’s $960,000. After expenses, there should be at least $800,000 left, right? I can’t bear to make my parents empty their savings for my marriage. We will use my savings for the wedding, $600,000 as the down payment for the new apartment, and the remaining $200,000 will be my wedding gift to you.” I froze. “But there isn’t a single dollar left!” Jason exploded. “You wasteful woman! You spent all the money?!” His mother also erupted. “So much money, and you squandered it all! What shameful acts have you been up to?! This marriage is off!” Jason demanded to see the accounts. I immediately pulled out the records in front of everyone. Seeing this, Jason’s mother panicked.

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

I fell for Don Lorenzo Moretti the second I saw him. Hard. As a mafia princess, I wasn't supposed to chase anyone. But for him, I swallowed my pride and made him my mission. A year later, he finally had me, pinning me to the bed as he moved inside me. His eyes were pure fire, and in that mo ment, they saw only me. For ten years, we were electric. We fucked in five-star hotels all over the world. We just fit. I was his lucky charm at the poker table. I took shots for him until I bled from my stomach. I even took a bullet for him. Then came our engagement party. Lorenzo left me standing there alone. Said something "came up." I went back to our apartment, only to find him kissing my stepsister, Juliana. That’s when I knew. He had always loved her. I was just a stand-in. He tried to explain, words tumbling out in a panicked rush, promising a bigger, better party to make up for it. A laugh, cold and hollow, died in my throat. I turned my back on him, pulled out my phone, and called my mother in Sicily. "I'll marry into the Romano family."

Sofia’s life isn’t easy. She’s been living alone almost all her life. She completely depends on herself. She’s twenty-four and still single. She’s working in a café for two years, but then suddenly, a small misunderstanding causes her to lose her job. After she lost her job, she received the most devastating news of her life. Her apartment caught on fire. Now that she’s jobless and now homeless. She doesn’t have any choice but to contact her last relative, which is her aunty. Sofia doesn’t want to stay with her because she’s abusive and has a bad temper. The same as her aunt’s only daughter. She can say she’s a bitch. Sofia once lived with them, but they kicked her out after all her sacrifices. She planned to live under the same roof with them for only two days until she could find her own place and job. They agreed; although she found it weird, she chose to ignore it. Little thing did she know, they would use her to pay their dept. One day after she moved out, a group of men went to their house and took her away

“Is Batman my daddy?” my son Jackson pipes up from the back seat. Of course not! But telling him that his father is Asher Giordano, leader of New York’s deadliest mafia empire is out of the question. He found us anyway. “What have you done with Jackson?” I demand. “My son?” Asher asks calmly, looking around my small apartment disdainfully. “The one you’ve been hiding from me and forcing to live in this…pigeonhole?” Our son, not yours. “You’re the one who left me at the alter without as much as a ‘see you later’. If you left me a forwarding address to contact you at, I must have missed it.” Asher regards me coldly. I don’t know this man. The boy I fell in love with was warm, giving and open. This man in front of me is frostier than the arctic with his glacial eyes. “I know you know who I am and what I’m capable of, so don’t try anything stupid, Emmeline. There’s nowhere you can run where I can’t find you.” “Gosh, Asher, that’s like a line straight out of a movie. Have you been practicing delivering it in front of a mirror?”