Asset Bound
How do you come back from living a lie?
Arya Cole chose a mundane life for a year, but that life never truly belonged to her. Her father's sins hadn't been buried with him; they were her only inheritance.
Proof. Names. Dates. An entire network of people who made sure the truth stayed buried. They don't negotiate. Arya doesn't get to say no. Not when everyone she loves is already on the line.
She goes back in. Except nothing about it is her choice. The exit was just another prison.
The deeper she goes, the more the walls close in. The patterns. The people. The choices she thought were hers. Everything she believed about her freedom starts to crack. What if walking away was never an escape? What if it was just the next phase of the mission?
How much of yourself can you sacrifice before the person you're saving no longer exists?
- About the author
- I.B. RAYMA is an Algerian writer, born and raised in Sidi Bel Abbès. A collector by nature, she moves between worlds of knowledge and imagination—holding degrees in English Literature, Civil Engineering, and Development Studies, and immersing herself in everything from fantasy and self-development to film, music, and the stories that once existed only in fragments, until now.
She is drawn to a good cup of tea, people-watching, and the craft of literary and psychological fiction that lingers in the in-between spaces, where truth is unstable, morality is layered, and human beings resist simple categorization. Contradiction, nuance, and the quiet tension within people who are never just one thing are, by her own account, what compel her most.
Her current work focuses on developing character-driven narratives that explore identity, power, and moral ambiguity through intricate, immersive storytelling.
