Chapter 5

“Please, why don’t the both of you take a seat so we can go over the details of Silas’ will?”

Marcus cleared his throat and opened the heavy folder on the desk. "Your mother, Ruby, was legally married to Silas Everhart. As his wife, she was entitled to certain protections. But Silas went further than that. He updated his will just weeks before the accident."

He looked at Ariana, then in my direction at the farthest corner in the room, just rough to still clearly see her face.

"Silas wanted to ensure that his new family was unified. He knew his time was short, and he didn't want either of you to be alone in this world."

Marcus picked up a sheet of paper and began to read.

.

.

The silence that followed was deafening. I felt like the floor had opened up beneath me.

*Reside together.*

*Family.*

*Kin.*

The words hung in the air like smoke.

Ariana’s face went from pale to ghostly white. She looked at the paper, then at me, and I saw the horror dawning in her eyes. It was the same horror I felt crawling up my own spine.

"Family?" Ariana finally spoke. Her voice wasn't weak; it was low, sharp, and dripping with disbelief. "He called us... family?"

"Yes," Marcus said, adjusting his glasses. "In the eyes of the law, Ariana, you are Silas’s daughter. And Lucas is his son. That makes the two of you step-siblings."

Step-siblings.

The word felt like a physical slap. Ariana let out a harsh, bitter breath

"No," she muttered as she looked in my direction for the first time since the whole session begin. "I'm not doing this."

Without a single word of warning, she snatched her purse from the table and spun on her heel, marching toward the door. 

As she reached for the brass doorknob, I moved. My hand shot out, slamming against the heavy wood right above her head, locking the door shut before she could turn it.

"Let me out, Lucas," she hissed, her back still turned to me. Her shoulders were tense, vibrating with rage.

"We're not done here," I murmed, my chest pressing against her back. The scent of her was still the same. It was driving me insane.

"Lucas, Ariana, please, we must maintain decorum—" Marcus started, rising from his chair.

I didn't look back at him. "Marcus, get out." I said, my eyes still fixed on the side of Ariana’s neck.

"Excuse me? Lucas, this is my office—"

"I don't care whose office it is," I said, my voice dangerously calm, turning my head slightly, my glare enough to make the older man take a step back. "Leave the papers and get out of the room."

Seeing the look on my face, Marcus didn't argue. He swallowed hard, gathered his briefcase, and quickly slipped out of the room through the side exit, clicking the door shut behind him.

The moment the lock clicked, the silence returned, heavier and hotter than before.

Ariana immediately turned around, her front slamming into my chest because of how closely I was trapping her against the door. She didn't shrink back. She looked up at me, her eyes blazing with a fierce, angry fire.

"Are you out of your mind?" she whispered, her hands coming up to press against my chest, trying to push me away. "Did you hear what he just said? Your father... my mother... we are step-siblings, Lucas. What we did—"

"What we did happened before any of this," I interrupted, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. I grabbed her wrists, pinning them against the wood of the door on either side of her head. I leaned in closer, my breath brushing her lips. "Don't look at me like I'm your brother, Ariana. We both know I'm not."

"It's a sin now," she breathed, her heart hammering wildly against my chest. She was trying to stay strong, but her lips parted, her breathing hitching as my gaze dropped to her mouth. "If anyone finds out... your empire, your reputation, everything will be ruined. And you will probably hate me for that."

"Let it burn," I growled.

The anger between us suddenly snapped, turning into a desperate, chaotic heat. I didn't give her a choice. I leaned down and captured her mouth in a bruising, possessive kiss.

She fought me for a split second, her teeth grazing my lip in a sharp bite, but the taste of blood only made the fire grow. With a soft, defeated moan, her defiance melted into the same raw hunger that was tearing me apart. Her hands, suddenly freed from my grip, tangled into the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me closer.

We were standing in a room full of dead people's wishes, wearing the clothes of mourning, breaking the law with every breath we took. She was my stepsister in the eyes of the world, but under my hands, she was the only sin I would gladly commit over and over again.

I pulled away just an inch, our lips still brushing, our chests heaving.

"One year," I whispered against her skin, my hands sliding down to grip her waist, pulling her flush against my heat. "You have to live in my house for one year, little moonlight. Do you really think you can survive a year under my roof without letting me touch you?"

Ariana looked up at me, her lips swollen from my kiss. She looked anything but docile. 

Ariana’s POV

"I guess we’ll find out," I whispered against his lips, my voice laced with a sharp defiance I didn't even know I possessed.

The heat between us was suffocating, a dark and heavy thing trapped inside the walls of Marcus’s vacated office. Lucas’s hands were still locked tightly around my waist, his fingers digging into my skin through the fabric of my black mourning dress. He looked down at me with hooded, dark eyes, his breathing rough and uneven. He thought he had me trapped. He thought his father’s will and this sick twist of fate would make me bow to him.

Slowly, deliberately, I placed my palms flat against his chest and shoved. I didn't expect him to move, he was built like a wall of solid muscle, but the sudden, icy shift in my energy made him step back. He let his hands drop to his sides, his jaw tightening as he watched me create distance between us.

"What is that look supposed to mean, Ariana?" his deep voice rumbled, the temporary softness from the kiss instantly evaporating into cold authority. "You heard the terms. One year. Under my roof."

I let out a short, bitter laugh, stepping back until the heavy mahogany table was between us.

"It means you can keep the house, Lucas. You can keep the estate, the money, the cars, and every single cent my stepfather left behind. I am not moving into that mansion with you."

Lucas’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. He leaned his hands on the edge of the table, towering over the paperwork that labeled us as family. "You don't have a choice. It’s a legal mandate. If you breach the residency clause, the entire inheritance is compromised."

"Do I look like I care about an inheritance?" I snapped, my chin lifting. The grief of losing my mother was still a raw, bleeding wound in my chest, and the sheer absurdity of arguing over dollar signs made me want to scream. "I didn't even know my mother was married to your father until three days ago! I didn’t ask for his money, and I don’t want it. I’ve spent the last three years building my own fashion brand from nothing. My studio is doing incredibly well. I pay my own bills, Lucas. I don't need a dead billionaire's charity to survive, and I certainly don't need YOU."

The silence that followed my words was brittle. Lucas straightened up slowly, his height imposing, his face shifting into the ruthless mask of the CEO who ran half of the country. 

Seems like my independence didn't impress him and only insulted his need for absolute control.

"You naïve, stubborn little girl," "You think this is just about your precious little boutique? This is the Everhart empire we are talking about. My father’s will states that if either of us rejects the terms, the entire estate freezes and goes into a legal deadlock until a court decides the distribution. I have spent my entire life bleeding for this company. I am not going to let this sentimental, bureaucratic family shit stand between me and my rightful inheritance."

"I am not letting everything I built get locked away in a courtroom because you want to play the proud, independent artist," he hissed.

He sneered. "But then again, why am I surprised? This is exactly the kind of chaotic, dramatic game your mother would play, isn't it? Ruby Meadows spent her entire life jumping from one man's bed to the next, looking for a quick payday. She finally hits the jackpot with my lonely father, signs a marriage license in a cheap Vegas chapel, and drags you along for the ride. You’re just like her, aren't you? A pair of pretty, gold-digging opportunists who—"

Slap.

The sound cracked through the quiet office like a gunshot.

My palm stung with a fierce, burning heat. My breath hitched in my throat as I stared at Lucas, my hand still trembling in the air between us. His head was turned slightly to the side from the sheer force of the blow.

The silence that followed was terrifying. It  felt like the air had been entirely sucked out of the room, leaving behind a volatile vacuum. I stepped back, my heart hammering violently against my ribs, a sudden wave of horror washing over me. I had never hit anyone in my life. I was the 'soft' girl, the gentle designer. But hearing him insult my dead mother, hearing him reduce her grief and her life into a cheap insult, had triggered something primal inside me and made my blood boil.

Slowly, he turned his head back to face me. A dark red mark was blooming across his sharp cheekbone. His eyes weren't angry anymore; they were completely dead, a terrifying abyss of absolute coldness. His jaw muscle leaked tension as he clenched his teeth, his fingers curling into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides.

I swallowed hard, my eyes wide with a mixture of fear and regret, though I refused to apologize. I opened my mouth to speak, to say something to break the suffocating tension, but the sudden, sharp vibration of my purse on the table cut through the room.

It had been buzzing for minutes, a persistent, annoying hum that I had ignored during our argument. Now, it felt like a life saver.

Without breaking eye contact with Lucas’s deadly stare, I reached blindly onto the table and grabbed my phone. I unlocked the screen, expecting a call from the fabric suppliers or my studio assistant. Instead, my eyes landed on a notification from the hospital's patient portal with the lab results from the emergency blood tests the doctors had forced me to sign for before I could go up to the ICU.

I tapped the screen, opening the P*F file.

My eyes skipped past the standard clinical text, searching for the reason my blood pressure had bottomed out in the office days ago. My gaze locked onto a bolded line near the bottom of the page.

TEST: HCG Beta (Qualitative)

RESULT: POSITIVE.

DIAGNOSIS: Pregnancy.

The room spun violently.  floor beneath my heels together with the dark wooden panels of the office blurred into a sickening vortex. 

The phone felt like ice in my hand. 

Positive.

I was pregnant.

My mind spun backward, crashing through the timeline. Four months ago. The penthouse in Florence, the heavy scent of sandalwood, and the bruising, desperate heat of the man currently standing in front of me. We hadn't used protection. In our reckless, chaotic rush to escape the world, we had been completely careless.

I looked up from the screen, my eyes lifting to find Lucas still staring at me, his expression still dark and dangerous, entirely unaware of the nuclear bomb that had just detonated inside my chest. He was looking at the woman he had just called a gold-digger. He was looking at his new stepsister.

And I was carrying his child.

A wave of intense, suffocating nausea washed over me, so violent I had to press a hand over my stomach. The irony wasn't just cruel; it was a death sentence. The child growing inside me wasn't just a baby; it was evidence of a sin that the law now considered a crime. If Lucas found out, if anybody else found out, the empire he loved so much would crumble under the weight of this scandal.

"Ariana?" Lucas’s voice cut through my panic, his tone shifting slightly as he noticed the sudden, ghostly paleness of my face. His brow furrowed, his eyes dropping to the phone in my shaking hand. "What is it?"

He took a step toward me, his large hand reaching out as if to grab my arm.

"Don't touch me!" I choked out, my voice high and terrified.

Before he could bridge the gap I once again created, I snatched my purse from the table, spun on my heel, and bolted. I threw the heavy oak doors open, slamming them against the outer wall, and ran down the sterile, marble hallway of the law firm.

"Ariana! Stop!" his voice roared behind me, echoing off the high ceilings, but I didn't look back.