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CAUGHT IN THE SHADOWS
publish date:
2026-10-27 23:20:58
Latest chapter
I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION THE HEADLINE
The leak didn't happen as a slow leak. It hit like a truck at seven-fifteen on a Friday morning. I was standing at the kitchen counter waiting for the water to boil when my phone started vibrating against the quartz. It wasn't a call. It was a wave of text notifications, fast and relentless, popping up on the screen so quickly the glass seemed to buzz like a hive of hornets. Clara: Don't open social media. Clara: Nyra, do not look at your phone. Clara: Stay inside your apartment. I’m serious. My hand was already moving before my brain could stop it. I opened the browser. It was on the front page of The Daily Ledger’s business and entertainment gossip section. The main headline was written in massive, bold, blood-red text that filled the entire top half of the screen: "COLEBRIDGE CAPITAL’S INCEST SECRETS: SENIOR PARTNER LUCA MORETTI BEDS HIS OWN STEP-SISTER IN CORPORATE SUITE SCANDAL." Beneath the headline was a blurry, high-resolution photo...the exact photo Richard had taken.
I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION THE KITCHEN FLOOR
NYRA'S POV The front door didn't just open; it felt pushed, as if the hallway air itself had been waiting to flood the room with cold pressure. Mum walked in wearing her sharp slate coat, wet from the rain, holding her bag against her side like armor. Her hair was pulled back tightly, showing every line of tension around her eyes...lines that had deepened over the last forty-eight hours until she looked ten years older. She didn't take off her shoes. She stood on the hardwood just past the entry mat, her eyes sweeping the hallway, the kitchen, and finally settling on the closed study door down the hall. “He’s in there?” she asked. Her voice was low, strained, stripped of any maternal warmth. “Yes,” I said, locking the deadbolt behind her. “Keep your voice down.” “Keep my voice down,” she repeated, a bitter, breathless laugh catching in her throat. “That’s what you’re worried about, Nyra? That he hears me?” She pulled off her gloves with sharp, jerking motions and shoved them in
I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION THE EDGE OF THE FRAME
Luca’s interview lasted two hours and fourteen minutes. When he finally came out of Conference Three, he didn't head back to his office, and he didn't stop by my desk. He walked straight past the rows of quiet cubicles, looking at nobody, his coat already over his arm. The only sign that he was anything less than stone was the tight, white line of his knuckles as he held his briefcase. My phone buzzed two seconds later. Luca: Meet me in the garage in five minutes. I picked up my bag, told Clara I was stepping out to handle a personal errand, and didn't wait to hear her answer. Down in the darkness of the parking garage, his car was already running, the exhaust rising in faint gray plumes against the damp concrete. I slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut, the sudden silence of the car sealing us off from the building above. For a full minute, he didn't pull out of the space. He sat with his hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead
I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION CLOSED DOORS
NYRA'S POV Thursday morning smelled like photocopy toner and cold rain. Luca’s interview with Legal and HR was locked in for nine o'clock in the same sterile conference room where I had sat two days before. He didn't ask me to walk him down the hall. He didn't offer any parting advice. He just stood by the kitchen island, buttoning the cuffs of a fresh shirt with long, mechanical movements, his jaw set so tight the muscle beneath his clean-shaven skin flickered once, twice. “Reid is sitting in with him,” Clara muttered, sliding a stack of deal files onto my desk around eight-forty-five. She didn't look up from her screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a clatter that sounded like dry bones. “And Colebridge is physically on the floor. First time he’s hovered outside executive suites since the merger.” “Is he inside the room?” I asked, my voice flat, keeping my eyes fixed on an email I had already read three times. “Not yet. But he’s parked in the glass office at the
I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION NEXT HIT
Late in the afternoon, Anita sent a brief, formal note thanking me for my time and stating that next steps would follow after additional interviews were conducted. She didn't specify whose. She didn't need to. Luca was going to have to sit in that exact same chair. Maybe other people, too. The corporate machine was moving whether we liked the direction or not. We left the building separately and managed to arrive back at the apartment within ten minutes of each other. He dropped his keys on the entryway table, loosened his tie, and looked at me properly for the first time since morning. “How bad?” “Survivable,” I said, kicking off my heels. “They grilled me about the relationship. I confirmed we have a personal connection and the stepfamily history without handing them a timeline they could paste onto a board report. Reid kept the worst of it from turning into a total deposition about our private lives.” “Did they ask if I gave you unfair preferential treatment?” “Yes. I sai
I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION THE RECORD
Tuesday came way too fast, and somehow still not fast enough. I dressed like a woman who had nothing in the world to hide, because that was the assignment I’d given myself. Dark trousers. A clean, high-necked blouse, my hair pulled back into something simple and unpretentious. It was the exact kind of face the firm preferred you to wear when they dragged you into a room with Legal. Luca watched me from the kitchen doorway while I forced myself to pour a cup of coffee I didn't actually want. The space between us still wasn't the ordinary, comfortable kind. He had come back to the bed last night in a purely technical sense, but he hadn't come back to me. “Reid is meeting you in the lobby at ten,” he said, his voice flat. “I won't be in the room unless they explicitly ask for me. Anita said they want to get your account first, separate from mine.” “I know.” “If they ask about family, you answer the exact question they asked, not the one hiding underneath it.” “I know, Luca.” He ga
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