Little Black Lies: BOOK FOUR (Deadman’s Daughter 4)

Noel Sterling has lived in a world of shadows and whispers, her blindness a shield as much as a sentence. Raised in silence after her father—infamously dubbed the “Angelmaker”—was convicted of a string of ritualistic murders, Noel has learned to navigate life with caution and grace. But just as she begins to trust the quiet, something starts to stir in the dark.

It begins with a music box left on her kitchen counter—one she never placed there. Then a charm bracelet, strung with strange symbols. One by one, the gifts arrive, each more personal than the last. Noel can’t see them, but she can feel the meaning pulsing beneath her fingertips. Someone is trying to speak to her. And they know her better than anyone should.

Leo Maddox built his career around controlling chaos. As a high-end personal security consultant, he doesn’t do emotional entanglements—or repeat clients. But when he’s called to protect Noel, something shifts. She doesn’t flinch from his scars. She doesn’t pity his pain. And though she can’t see him, Leo has never felt more seen.

What starts as a protective detail turns into something far more intimate. In the hush between danger and desire, Noel and Leo build a fragile trust—one made of late-night confessions, whispered stories, and the kind of touch that leaves more than bruises. But trust is a dangerous currency when the past is a lie dressed in truth.

Because the deeper Leo digs, the more he realizes this case was never about her father. The gifts left for Noel mimic the ones found with the original victims—but with chilling differences. The timeline doesn’t match. The materials are wrong. And the pattern points to someone still alive… and intimately familiar.

As the messages escalate, Noel starts to remember things she was never supposed to. Childhood fragments. Echoes of a voice that told her not to tell. Flashes of her mother, beautiful and strange, always humming as she cleaned. Always humming as she worked. Always humming when someone died.

Noel has spent her life protecting the story they gave her: that her father was the monster, and her mother the martyr. But monsters don’t leave lullabies behind. And martyrs don’t bury knives in garden beds. The more she remembers, the more everything unravels—until the truth becomes a blade she has to choose whether to wield or survive.

Leo promised to keep her safe. But safety means different things to different people. For Noel, it might mean finally stepping into the fire her parents lit—and deciding which part of her was born from the flames. For Leo, it means confronting the one woman he couldn’t save, and the guilt that’s haunted him ever since.

Together, they uncover a trail of secrets that cuts across decades, stitched together by blood and bone. Every lie, every silence, every carefully constructed alibi—built to protect a woman who never needed protection. Because Noel’s mother wasn’t covering for her husband. He was covering for her.

The truth is a weapon. And someone’s been waiting years for Noel to finally hold it.

But some truths come with a cost. And some legacies are written not in stories… but in scars.

Because in the house where Noel grew up, love was never blind. It was a warning.