His Forbidden Mate: The Billionaire stepbrother’s claim

The thing about happiness is you never know when you're living the last moment of it.

I'm folding my favorite sweater, the gray one with the hole in the left sleeve that I refuse to throw away, when Mom bursts through my bedroom door like she's won the lottery. Maybe she has. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes bright with something I haven't seen in five years. Hope, maybe. Or delusion.

"Aria, sweetheart, you're not even packed yet?"

I glance at the three boxes scattered across my floor, half-filled with books and clothes that smell like our tiny apartment. Like home. "I'm getting there."

She crosses the room in four steps. That's how small this place is. You can measure everything in steps, in breaths, in the space between what we have and what we've lost. Her hands land on my shoulders, and I feel the tremor in her fingers. Excitement or fear. With Mom, it's hard to tell the difference anymore.

"This is going to change everything," she says, and her voice cracks on the last word. "Everything, honey. Adrian, he's so generous. You'll have your own room, bigger than this entire apartment. You can finally focus on your studies without worrying about, about anything."

I want to ask her what we're supposed to stop worrying about. The electricity bill? The way she sometimes skips dinner so I can eat more? The medical debt from Dad's final months that still shows up in collection notices?

But I don't. Because she's smiling, and I haven't seen her really smile since we buried Dad in that cemetery plot we could barely afford.

"I know, Mom." I turn back to my sweater, running my thumb over the frayed threads. Dad bought me this. Two Christmases before the cancer. Before everything fell apart in slow motion, one hospital bill at a time.

"You don't sound excited." She's doing that thing where she tries to make her voice light, but I can hear the edge underneath. The please don't ruin this for me edge.

I paste on a smile, the one I've perfected over the last five years. The I'm fine, really smile that makes her stop asking questions. "I am. It's just, it's a lot of change."

"Change is good." She squeezes my shoulders. "Adrian is good. He's so different from, well. He'll take care of us, Aria. Both of us."

There it is. The unspoken comparison to Dad, like Adrian Hayes with his billions and his mansion and his three-month courtship is somehow an upgrade from the man who loved her since high school. The man who worked two jobs to send me to a decent school. The man who died too young and left us drowning.

I hate that I'm bitter about this. I should be happy for her. I am happy for her. I'm also terrified, and I can't explain why.

"How did you meet him again?" I ask, even though I've heard the story twice already. Once at dinner two months ago when she told me she was dating someone. Once last month when she showed me the engagement ring that probably costs more than our annual rent.

Mom's eyes go soft, dreamy. "At the hospital charity gala. Remember? The one I helped organize?"

I remember. She'd been volunteering there since Dad died, trying to give back to the place that couldn't save him. Penance or purpose, I never asked.

"He was donating a new wing," she continues. "We started talking, and he was so kind, Aria. So interested in the work we do. He asked me to dinner, and then another dinner, and then..." She laughs, and it sounds young. Younger than I've heard in years. "I know it's fast. Trust me, I know. But when you've lost someone you love, you learn not to waste time. Life's too short, honey."

My stomach twists. Something about this doesn't sit right. It's been gnawing at me for weeks, this feeling like I'm watching Mom step off a cliff and calling it flying. I've always had good instincts. Dad used to call it my bullshit detector. It kept me out of trouble in middle school when the popular girls tried to recruit me into their schemes. It warned me about Mom's cousin who asked to borrow money and never paid us back.

Right now, it's screaming.

But I can't say that. Can't tell her that Adrian Hayes, with his perfect smile and his perfect manners and his too-good-to-be-true interest in a struggling hospital volunteer, feels wrong. Because maybe I'm just bitter. Maybe I'm just scared of losing the last pieces of the life Dad built for us.

Maybe I'm selfish for wanting her to stay in this cramped apartment where we can't afford to run the heat in winter.

"I'm happy for you," I say, and I mean it. I do.

She kisses my forehead. "Pack light. Adrian said we can buy you new things. Anything you want."

After she leaves, I sit on the edge of my bed, holding that sweater. The room smells like vanilla candles and old books, the scent of every night I've spent here doing homework, reading, dreaming about college and the future. My future, on my terms.

I pull open my nightstand drawer and find the photo buried under old journals and birthday cards. Dad and Mom on their wedding day, young and broke and so stupidly in love it hurts to look at. He's wearing a suit that doesn't quite fit. She's in a simple white dress from a consignment shop. They're laughing at something outside the frame, caught in a moment of pure joy that no amount of money could buy.

"I'll take care of her," I whisper to the photo. To him. To the ghost that lives in the spaces between Mom's smiles. "I promise. Whatever this is, whatever he wants, I'll protect her."

The photo doesn't answer. It never does.

I pack the sweater first. Then the photo, wrapped in tissue paper and tucked deep in my backpack where Mom won't see it and tell me to let go of the past. Some things you don't let go of. Some things you carry, even when they're heavy, because forgetting feels like betrayal.

By midnight, my room is empty except for the furniture that came with the apartment. My whole life fits in six boxes and two suitcases. It should feel freeing. It feels like erasure.

I lie in bed, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that looks like a dragon if you squint. I've memorized every crack in this plaster, every creak of the floorboards, every sound the radiator makes when it struggles to life on cold mornings.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up in a mansion. In a room bigger than this apartment. In a world where my stepfather is a billionaire and my new stepbrother is, what? Some prep school prince who probably thinks people like me are charity cases?

Mom mentioned him once. Lucian. Twenty years old, studies at some elite academy, mostly keeps to himself. She'd said it dismissively, like he was a piece of furniture that came with the house.

I wonder if he's angry about this. About his father marrying someone so far beneath their social class. About suddenly having a stepsister thrust into his perfect life.

I wonder if he'll hate me on sight.

My phone buzzes. A text from Mom: Sweet dreams, honey. Tomorrow is the first day of our new life. Love you to the moon.

I stare at the words until they blur.

Love you too, I type back. Then, because I can't help myself, because that gnawing feeling won't stop, I add: Are you sure about this?

Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

I've never been more sure of anything.

I want to believe her. I want to silence the voice in my head that says she's running from grief into the arms of a man she barely knows. I want to trust that Adrian Hayes married her for love, not for whatever reason billionaires do anything.

But my instincts are screaming, and I learned a long time ago not to ignore them.

I turn off my phone and close my eyes, trying to sleep. But all I can see is tomorrow. The mansion. The new life. The invisible trap I can feel closing around us, even if I can't see the bars yet.

Somewhere across the city, in a house I've never seen, my new life is waiting.

I'm not ready for it.

I don't think I'll ever be ready for what comes next.