All Chapters of Step Brother's Deadly Obsession : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Naomi’s POV The house was too quiet. Even with guards posted outside, even with security lights glowing faintly over the pool, I felt the silence pressing in. It wasn’t the silence of safety. It was the silence of a stage before the curtain rose. I sat on the edge of my bed, pistol in my lap, eyes fixed on the ceiling. I had told myself I wouldn’t sleep tonight, and I hadn’t. The storm had passed but the air was still heavy, sticky against my skin. Each creak of wood, each sigh of the pipes sent my heart lurching. At some point, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I rose, tucked the pistol under my sweater, and cracked my door. The hallway beyond was dark, with only the faintest spill of light from the sconces. Something felt wrong. The guards rotated in pairs every half hour, their boots usually a steady background rhythm. But tonight…nothing. No footsteps. No low chatter. Only the faint hum of the generator. I slipped out, barefoot, each step cautious on the carpet. I should have g

Naomi’s POV My wrists throbbed where the cloth had cut into them, each breath a hot, shallow thing. The bag had been ripped off hours ago, but darkness still sat behind my eyes like a second eyelid. They moved me like I was an object, gripped under arms, shoved forward, limbs not my own. My skin still tingled from the bag’s roughness. Every muscle in me ached from the fight, from the bite of a tooth that had been driven into a knuckle. I tasted metal, bright and shameful: the memory of my own blood. Footsteps. Voices. The men argued in low, clipped bursts, the language a kind I didn’t know. I listened, not because I understood but because sound was a thread I could follow when everything else unraveled. “Keep her quiet,” one said. “No fuss.” “She’s small. Not worth more than meat,” another answered. “Reyes wants her alive.” Alive. The word was a stone in my chest. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Cassian: the way he had bent over my broken things the night I’d come to him,

Naomi’s POV The warehouse smelled of oil and salt, like an old shipwreck dragged onto land. Rust stained the steel beams overhead. Water dripped somewhere in the shadows with slow, deliberate patience, echoing against concrete walls. They had moved me again. The van, then a narrow hallway, then stairs. Now I sat in a metal chair bolted to the floor. My wrists were tied with rough rope, my ankles to the chair legs. The bag was gone, but the dim light was worse, enough to see my captors but not enough to see an exit. Two men stood guard near a steel door, rifles hanging at their sides. Another leaned against a pillar, smoking. None of them spoke, for a moment I wondered why I was still alive. And then Reyes entered. He came through the door like he owned the air. Two men flanked him but he didn’t need them; his presence filled the room like a tide. He was taller than I’d imagined, shoulders still powerful despite his age, his skin lined and pale from scars that webbed across h

Naomi’s POV When I woke, I thought for one strange, fleeting second that I was back in my old room, the one with the peeling wallpaper and the narrow bed. But then the smell hit me. Damp concrete. Rust. The stale tang of smoke that had sunk into the walls long before I arrived. I opened my eyes to a ceiling stained with water marks, a barred window high above casting a slice of weak light across the room. Dust drifted lazily in the pale beam. Every sound carried in the silence, the drip of water from somewhere in the pipes, the faint hum of electricity in the walls, my own uneven breathing. I tried to move, and the weight reminded me where I was. Chains, thick and cold, bit into my wrists and ankles. They rattled faintly, bolted to the floor in cruel precision. Not so short that I couldn’t stand or sit, but short enough that every step would remind me: you belong here. I sat up slowly. My back ached from the cot, if you could call it that. It was little more than a slab of meta

Naomi’s Pov; They woke me before dawn. The sound of the chains rattling had become familiar, but the rough hands that gripped my arms felt colder than usual, businesslike. Two guards dragged me from the cot, one on each side, their grips bruising through my skin. The hallway was narrow, with concrete walls sweating with damp. I stumbled once when my ankle chain caught, but the guard yanked me upright without slowing. I tried to count my steps, tried to memorize turns, but everything felt endless, repeating, left, right, another corridor, another flicker. The kind of place built to confuse people like me. Finally, they pushed me into a wider room. It was almost domestic compared to the cell: a long table, two chairs facing each other, a lamp burning with steady yellow light. The walls were bare, but a rug softened the floor, and the air carried the faint smell of cigar smoke. Reyes sat at the head of the table, waiting like a host at dinner. His pale eyes glinted when he saw me.