In love with a lie

This book and all its characters, ideas, and words belong to me alone. No one else may write, rewrite, continue, or adapt this story in any way without my explicit permission. Please respect that. You find this book apart from inkitt let me know.

WARNING: This book contains themes of incest, abuse, drugs, grief, and emotional trauma. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Additionally, this story includes moments of quiet dread, complicated family loyalties, and choices that blur the line between love and harm. If you're not comfortable with that then its not for you, otherwise enjoy.

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The Zulu Family

In a house in Cape Town, South Africa, there were four children.

Ethan Zulu, twenty-three, he was more of the the calm and quiet leader—authoritative type in a way that made others follow without question. Then came John, nineteen funny, irresponsible, but capable of rising to the occasion when the moment demanded it. Australia, eighteen, was the fragile one, though no one would call her weak. She was kind and supportive, the kind of person who held everyone together, who made everything okay even when she herself was not and the only girl. And finally, Kyle, the youngest at fourteen—rebellious, always complaining, always pushing back.

Their parents had been doctors. But COVID-19 took them both that year, leaving Ethan and John to shoulder the weight of what remained.

By birth, the Zulu children were both African and Spanish—a heritage that ran through their blood like two rivers meeting. They carried it quietly, in ways they didn't always understand, in ways that surfaced unexpectedly, in a turn of phrase, a lullaby half-remembered, a stubborn pride that refused to break.

Cape Town was their home, beneath the shadow of Table Mountain, where the wind never stopped and the sky always seemed to be deciding what kind of blue to be.