Stepbrother's Mercy

Raven Sinclair sat with her combat-booted feet planted wide, black fingernails digging crescents into her palms. Nineteen years old, dyed-black hair with fresh crimson roots, a torn Siouxsie and the Banshees shirt under a studded leather jacket.

Across the polished mahogany table sat Saint Valenti, twenty-three, heir-apparent to the Valenti Mafia family, immaculate in a charcoal Tom Ford suit cut so sharp it could have drawn blood. His cufflinks were platinum skulls. His eyes were winter.

Their parents, Raven’s mother and Saint’s father had perished three weeks earlier when their Gulfstream plunged into the Mediterranean. Today the combined will was read.

The lawyer, a nervous ferret of a man named Hirsch, adjusted his glasses six times before beginning.

“To Raven Amelia Sinclair, my daughter, I bequeath my personal jewelry collection and a trust fund in the amount of three million U.S. dollars, to be released on her twenty-fifth birthday or upon marriage, whichever occurs first.”

Raven’s jaw flexed. Three million was pocket change to these people, and six years away felt like a life sentence.

“To my son, Saint Michael Valenti, I bequeath the remainder of my estate: the Valenti Holdings shares, real property in Aspen, Capri, Manhattan, and Nassau, all offshore accounts, and full executive control of the family enterprises.”

Saint didn’t blink. He already knew every digit.

Hirsch swallowed audibly. “There is… a codicil.”

He read it like a man defusing a bomb.

“Should Raven leave the Manhattan penthouse residence prior to age twenty-five or marriage, the trust fund shall immediately dissolve and all assets revert irrevocably to Saint Valenti. During her residency, Saint shall serve as her legal guardian with full disciplinary authority.”

Raven exploded out of her chair. “This is medieval bullshit! I’m nineteen, not a fucking Victorian orphan!”

Saint’s voice cut through the room like a blade. “Sit. Down. Little sister.”

The lawyer practically dove under the desk. Raven remained standing, vibrating with rage.

Saint rose slowly, all six-foot-three of him, and rounded the table until he loomed over her. He smelled of cedar, gun oil, and something darker.

“You have two choices, Raven,” he said, soft enough that only she could hear. “One: you move into the penthouse tonight. My house. My rules.

Two: you walk out that door right now. By tomorrow every account your mother ever touched will be frozen. Your phone, your cards, your fake ID, your dealer’s number, gone. You’ll be sleeping on the subway with the rest of the runaways. so Choose wisely.”

Her pulse hammered in her throat. She had exactly $47 in her pocket and a duffel bag of black clothes in a Midtown locker. Her friends were broke. Her mother had burned every other bridge with fire and vodka.

She spat on the polished marble floor between his Ferragamo loafers.

“Fine,” she hissed. “But I’m not your prisoner.”

Saint smiled slow, cruel and devastating.

“That,” he said, “is now exactly what you are.”

That night the Valenti penthouse occupied the entire 80th and 81st floors of the Obsidian Tower. Bulletproof glass from floor to ceiling, black marble floors veined with gold, a fireplace big enough to roast a man.

Raven stood in the foyer clutching her ratty duffel, boots dripping melted sleet. Saint appeared at the top of the floating staircase wearing a black silk robe, belt loosely knotted, a heavy crystal tumbler of something amber in his hand.

“Your room is the last door on the left,” he said. “House rules, effective immediately. No drugs on this premises. No overnight guests. No boys, period. Curfew midnight. You break a rule, you get punished. Understood?”

Raven laughed, sharp and bitter. “Punished? What are you going to do, big brother, ground me? Send me to bed without supper?”

He descended the stairs one deliberate step at a time until he stood a foot away. Close enough she could see the faint white scar that ran through his left eyebrow Naples, knife fight at age seventeen.

“I’ll do whatever I decide you deserve,” he murmured.

He reached out slow enough she could have dodged and wrapped one large hand around her throat. Not squeezing, just holding. His thumb rested over her racing pulse.

“First infraction happened this afternoon,” he said conversationally. “Spitting on Hirsch’s floor. That was disrespectful. Disrespect gets corrected immediately.”

Raven tried to jerk back. His grip tightened still not painful, just absolute.

“On your knees, Raven.”

“Fuck you.”

He leaned in until his lips brushed the shell of her ear.

“Do it, or I call security right now and have you escorted out wearing exactly what you have on. Forty-seven dollars won’t get you far in February.”

Her knees hit the cold marble with a crack that shot pain up her thighs.

Saint set the tumbler on the console table. With deliberate calm he untied the silk belt. The robe parted.

He was naked underneath, and already half-hard. His cock was thick, long, brutally elegant like the rest of him, the head flushed dark, a single bead of pre-cum pearling at the slit. A thin scar traced the underside, rumors said a Sicilian rival’s blade.

Raven’s breath caught despite herself.

Saint fisted the base and painted that bead across her clenched lips like gloss.

“Open,” he ordered.

She glared pure venom up at him, but her mouth parted.

He fed himself in slowly, letting her feel every vein, every throb. When the head bumped the back of her tongue she tried to pull away; his fingers threaded through her hair and locked her in place.

“Relax your throat, little sister. You’re going to learn to take all of me eventually. Might as well start tonight.”

He began to move, long, controlled strokes that pushed deeper with each thrust. Saliva flooded her mouth; tears blurred her vision. When her gag reflex spasmed around him he only hummed approval.

“Look at me while I fuck your face,” he said.

She forced her eyes up. The hatred burning there made his cock flex against her tongue.

“That’s it,” he praised, voice roughening. “Hate me. It makes you so fucking wet, doesn’t it?”

He suddenly pulled out, fisted himself once, twice, and came in thick, hot ropes across her face, cheeks, lips, eyelashes. The last spurt he aimed deliberately into her open, gasping mouth.

He tucked himself away, re-knotted the robe, and crouched so they were eye-level.

“Welcome home, Raven,” he whispered, brushing a thumb through the mess on her cheek and pressing it between her lips like communion.

“Clean yourself up. Dinner is in twenty minutes. Wear something pretty for me. And if you ever spit on my floor again, I’ll bend you over the dining table and fuck your virgin ass while the chef plates the entrée.”

He straightened, turned, and walked away without looking back.

Raven stayed on her knees in the puddle of his cum and her own furious tears long after his footsteps faded.

Eventually she whispered to the empty penthouse, voice cracking:

“I will burn your entire world down, Saint Valenti.”

But her thighs were trembling, and when she finally stood, the crotch of her black lace panties was soaked completely through.

She hated him with every cell in her body.

She hated even more that her body had already started counting the minutes until he touched her again.