CHAPTER 3

ARIA’S POV

The next day, the air felt different. It wasn’t just the lingering smell of cheap soap on my skin or the new contacts making my vision crisp. It was a weight, like a storm waiting to break. I walked through the college gates with Maya’s plan in my head and the cold, hard thing in my chest. I was looking for Zane. Instead, I found them.

They stood by the main fountain, a solid wall of male energy that seemed to warp the space around them. Reed, leaning against the stone, smirking at something on his phone. Cole, towering and silent, his gaze fixed on nothing. Kai, arms crossed, watching the students pass like a bored king. Jasper, his posture tight, scanning the crowd with sharp eyes.

My steps faltered. The courtyard. The pink paint. The torn shirt. Their collective stare that felt like a physical touch. It all slammed back into me, hotter and sharper than before. My new clothes—a simple black skirt and a fitted gray top Maya had picked—suddenly felt like a costume, thin and useless.

I stared at them, my pulse a frantic drum in my ears. The coldness inside me twisted into something new, something daring and dark. Do I just… approach them? The thought was insane. Ask them to teach me? Teach me what? How to be someone they wouldn’t look away from? My fingers clenched around the strap of my bag.

I must have stopped moving entirely, just standing there like a stunned animal in their path. Jasper’s eyes snapped to me. His focus was instant, a laser pinpoint.

“Miss Pranky,” he said, his voice dry and flat. “Look where you’re going.”

The nickname was a slap. It pulled me out of my head. I blinked. I was indeed standing still in the middle of the walkway, blocking the flow.

“I—” The word died in my throat. Reed glanced up from his phone, his lazy smile widening. Cole’s blank stare shifted to me, holding for a second. Kai’s gaze was the most intense, locking onto mine with an unnerving stillness.

“She’s thinking again,” Reed drawled, not to me, but to Jasper. “Probably plotting her next paint attack.”

A hot flush crawled up my neck. I wasn’t plotting. I was… considering. Considering them. Considering the raw, intimidating power they carried. It was a stupid, dangerous thought, but it was there, burning in the silence between us.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, a sharp vibration that broke the spell. I fumbled for it, my hands clumsy. Mom’s name flashed on the screen.

“Hey, sweetie!” Her voice was bright, too bright. “I’ve got… news. Good news! Can you come home right now? To the house.”

“Mom, I’m at school—”

“Now, Aria. Please. It’s important.”

The urgency in her tone was unfamiliar. She sounded… hopeful. It threw me. “Okay. I’m coming.”

I shoved the phone back into my pocket, the call severing the tense thread with the boys. I didn’t look at them again. I just turned and walked away, my new shoes clicking a hurried rhythm on the pavement.

The ‘house’ wasn’t our duplex. Mom’s text gave an address on the other side of town. A part of town with trees that weren’t dead and houses that didn’t sag. Steel Mansion, she’d written.

I stood before it that evening, my heart a trapped bird in my ribs. It was… a mansion. Stone and glass, sprawling and modern. A fortress. My little black skirt felt even smaller here.

Mom met me at the door, her face flushed with a strange excitement. “Come in, come in!” She pulled me inside, her grip tight. The foyer was vast, with a staircase that swept upwards like a promise. The air smelled clean, like lemons and money.

“Marcus!” she called out, her voice echoing.

A man descended the stairs. Tall, broad, with silver in his hair and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Marcus Steel. I knew the name. He owned half the town. My mother, Diana Collins, stood beside him, her hand on his arm. She looked… different. Smaller somehow, next to him.

“Aria,” Marcus said, his voice a smooth baritone. “Welcome. We’re all waiting in the dining room.”

All? I followed them, my stomach sinking. The dining room was long, with a table that could seat twenty. And at one end, already seated, were four figures.

Reed. Cole. Kai. Jasper.

They were here. In this house. Eating dinner like a normal family.

My mind went blank. White static.

Marcus gestured to a chair opposite them. “Sit, please.”

I sat. The wooden chair was cold and hard. My mother sat next to Marcus, beaming. “Aria, Marcus and I… we’ve been seeing each other for a while now. It’s time.”

Marcus cleared his throat. “Diana and I are getting married. Next month.”

The words hit me, but they didn’t land. They floated somewhere above my head.

“And,” Marcus continued, his gaze sweeping over his sons, then back to me, “given the circumstances, we thought it best to consolidate. Diana will move in here immediately. And you, Aria, will of course join us. This will be your home now.”

Home.

The four boys didn’t look at me. Reed picked at his food. Cole ate methodically, each movement precise. Kai watched his father, his expression unreadable. Jasper’s eyes were on his plate, but his jaw was clenched tight.

Stepsiblings.

The word dropped into my brain like a stone into a still pond. It spread, cold and heavy.

The boys who watched me get humiliated. The boys who saw my pink-stained skin, my torn shirt, my childish bra exposed to the sun and their cold, assessing eyes. The boys who then walked away without a word.

They were now my family.

The rest of the meal passed in a silent, surreal dream. Marcus talked about business, about the wedding plans. My mother smiled and nodded, her eyes shining. The brothers ate. They drank water. They passed plates. They did not speak to me. They did not look at me. I was a ghost at their table.

Nobody mentioned the courtyard. Nobody mentioned the paint. Nobody mentioned the fact that the girl sitting across from them, in her new clothes, trying to be someone else, was the same girl they’d dismissed as inconvenient scenery.

The weight of it sat in the room, thick and unspoken. It pressed on my lungs.

When the plates were cleared, Marcus stood. “I’m sure you’re tired, Aria. Your room is upstairs, second on the right. The boys will show you.”

They didn’t move. Reed finally glanced up, a flicker of something in his eyes—amusement, maybe, or annoyance. “It’s up the stairs. The door’s open.”

That was it. No offer to help. No welcome. Just a direction.

I stood, my legs unsteady. “Thank you,” I mumbled, the words hollow.

I walked out of the dining room, up the grand staircase. Each step felt like a mile. The hallway was wide, lined with doors. The second on the right was, indeed, open.

The room was huge. A bed with a thick comforter. A window that looked out over a manicured garden. A closet bigger than my old bedroom. It was perfect. It was a cage.

I closed the door and stood in the center of the space, the silence roaring in my ears. Then I walked to the bed and lay down on it, staring up at the blank ceiling.

My thoughts were a chaotic storm. My father. His laugh. His rough hands. The way he’d hug me after a bad day at school. He was gone. And my mother, in her grief and her exhaustion, had chosen this. Of every man in the world, she’d chosen the father of the four boys who made me feel like a piece of trash on the ground.

Technically family.

The words twisted in my gut. Family didn’t look at you like that. Family didn’t let you stand there, exposed and shamed, and then just walk away.

I ran through every way this could go wrong. They could ignore me forever, making me a ghost in this beautiful house. They could torment me, subtle and cruel, within these walls where no one would see. They could… teach me. The dark thought returned, hotter now.