Smile, baby. Men like Julian can’t stand a frown. It makes them remember they’re monsters. Last night, Gina found the key.
She’d never been in the basement. Julian kept it locked with a padlock that gleamed like fresh chrome. “Old wiring,” he’d say. “Dangerous. You stay upstairs, little one.” gina valentina pure taboo
She wanted to scream. Instead, she smiled. Because smiling was the second rule—one her mother had taught her before she disappeared. Smile, baby
Gina Valentina learned to ignore the rot. She’d lived with it since she was twelve, when her mother married Julian Cross—a man with soft hands and a hard stare, a collector of rare books and even rarer rules. He kept the house immaculate. He kept the thermostat at sixty-eight degrees. He kept Gina’s mother quiet with pills and promises. Last night, Gina found the key
Julian descended one step. Then another. The floorboards didn’t creak beneath him; he’d memorized their secrets long ago.
After her mother’s sudden disappearance, eighteen-year-old Gina Valentina becomes the sole focus of her grieving stepfather’s obsessive need for order, control, and a twisted kind of love. The house on Hemlock Lane always smelled of lavender and something rotting beneath the floorboards.