Rot

Rot Candace Wondrak © 2023 Candace Wondrak All Rights Reserved. Book cover by Silviya Andreeva at Book Covers by DarkImaginarium Art No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. No books by Candace Wondrak were written with any use of AI. Books by Candace Wondrak are only available at Amazon. If you are reading elsewhere, please note it is an illegal, pirated copy, uploaded without my permission. I, the author, nor the distributor received payment for the copy, and if prosecuted violation comes with a fine of up to $250,000. Please do not pirate books. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Epilogue Author's note: Okay, so, first off, if you haven't read the blurb, go do it. I think it makes it pretty obvious who the love interest is here. This isn't a story to read if you want a taboo-free relationship. That said, the relationship isn't simply because of the 'taboo-ness.' It's more like they both have darkness in them, and sometimes dark calls to dark. Now that that's out in the open, here are some detailed trigger warnings for some stuff in the book: violence, death, murder, swearing, detailed sex, rough sex, coerced sex, rape (by someone other than the LI). I don't think this is a super dark book, but I know different strokes for different folks and all that. One last thing, and I cannot say with emphasis enough: fuck AI 'written' books. Chapter One I was eight years old when I watched a classmate drown at my birthday party. It wasn’t my fault, you know. You shouldn’t go to a pool party if you didn’t know how to swim. And if you were a parent, you shouldn’t take your kid to a party and leave them there while you went off and did whatever for a few hours. Everyone else had already gone inside to cut the cake. My grandparents and the other classmates who’d come to the party. I wasn’t sure if I’d call any of them friends of mine. I was a hard person to get along with, even back then, even as a little girl. I watched her drown, watched her flail and struggle, and I moved not an inch to pull her from the water. I supposed I could’ve helped her, but I didn’t. It wasn’t my responsibility to help anyone; that was a lesson I’d learned from my grandmother, Sloane Karnagy. We had the same name. Sometimes I wondered if my mother named me Sloane to get underneath my grandmother’s skin. But, anyway, when her body floated up to the surface, her back to the sky, I decided to go inside and get some cake. I had my priorities straight at the time, what could I say? I went in, got sung to, and everybody had their slice of cake while shivering in the AC of my grandparents’ house. I lived with them, since my father was who he was and my mother was at some facility, trying to get better. Even back then, my grandparents blamed me for it, my grandmother worst of all. Let’s just say she wasn’t nice. Oh, the screams that rang out when everybody walked back outside and realized a girl had missed cake—and not only that, but that she was dead. My grandmother had pulled all us children inside while my grandfather called the police, or maybe an ambulance. The Karnagys had money. Our house was one of the biggest on the street, and there were many things inside the house that I was not allowed to touch with my grubby, greasy, eight-year-old fingers. My grandparents had money, and the attitude to match it. My attitude came from a different place, though. As sirens pulled up to the house and my grandfather dealt with everybody coming and going, my grandmother took me aside, away from the other girls. She sat me down on the couch and knelt in front of me, watching me with hazel eyes that seemed to know too much. She wore a frown, as she usually did when speaking with me, so tight there were lines around her lips. “You know what I’m about to say,” she started, and I was slow to nod, because I did. My grandmother always got that look on her face when she disapproved of me or something I’d done—or something she thought I did. “Do you have any idea how this is going to look, Sloane? That girl is dead. She died in our pool. You were the last to have seen her. Why didn’t you call for us?” She stood and pinched the bridge of her nose, pacing the floor before me. My grandmother stopped, her nose upturned as she glared at me. “Your grandfather always thought I was crazy, but I knew from the moment you were conceived that you would be just like your father.” She nearly spit at the mention of him. “He had the rot in him. It’s why he did what he did.” I held her stare, not wanting to look away. Even though this wasn’t the first time I’d heard this talk, each and every time I took it to heart, to the point where I’d memorized it. She pointed at me. “You might come from Karnagy stock, but you’re also a Bovine, and your father’s blood runs strong in you. You’ll have to work your entire life to stop the rot from taking you, too. Do you understand me, girl? You have the rot in you, just like him.” When I didn’t say anything, she made a shooing