Lahat ng Kabanata ng Choked And Claimed By My Brother’s Best Friend : Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

At 3 AM on Thursday morning, I got a front-row seat to exactly why Constance Montana hadn’t been spotted outside her house in fifteen fucking years.The screams had me shooting out of bed like someone had set off a fire alarm directly in my brain. I grabbed the first potential weapon I could find – some ridiculously ornate vase that probably cost more than my student loans – and followed the sound of pure terror upstairs.Victor intercepted me in the hallway, one finger pressed to his lips in the universal “shut the hell up” gesture, his other hand extended for my makeshift weapon. Even at 3 AM, the man looked ready to spring into action – black shirt, gray sweatpants, the kind of alert stillness that suggested he’d been awake the second those screams started.I handed over the vase, eyes locked on the door behind him where Constance’s cries were raising every hair on my neck. The sounds were primal, desperate, the kind that made your chest tight with secondhand panic.Then they stopp

Alonzo was at the office again on Friday. That made it the second day in a row we hadn’t seen each other since the whole vibrator incident, and the silence gnawed at me more than I wanted to admit. I told myself I was going to his apartment to bury myself in books, to study like a dutiful little academic. But the city heat had other plans.By eleven, the sun turned his penthouse into a glass greenhouse. The south-facing windows baked the air until my hair stuck to the back of my neck. I tried fiddling with the thermostat—pushed button after button until it beeped angrily and flashed a mocking red light. No matter what I did, the thing wouldn’t budge.“Asshole,” I hissed at it.Of course Alonzo had air conditioning. Of course he’d only ever set it to turn on when he was home. The man probably thought sweating through my clothes counted as character building.Fine. I could get relief in other ways.I opened the freezer, sighing when the first gust of cool air hit m

Thirty minutes of social warfare later, we’d shaken enough hands to qualify for political office, discussed more summer vacation plans than a travel agent, and Allie had collected business cards like they were Pokemon cards.For someone with zero experience navigating these bougie social landmines, she was absolutely destroying the competition. That easy smile and genuine interest in people’s kids and designer dogs had every trust fund baby and social climber eating out of her palm.“How are you holding up?” I asked after TV host Marc Trenton finally stopped name-dropping his Hamptons house and wandered off, his stolen soap now safely tucked in Allie’s increasingly heavy bag.“Amazing. Look at this haul.” She held the bag open like she’d just robbed a bank. “That’s got to be at least ten more bottles.”“No, Blondie. How are you doing?”She blinked at me, pink creeping up her cheeks like someone had just asked her to recite the periodic table. “Are you asking whet

Rationalizing everything into neat, logical categories while I spiraled through seventeen different worst-case scenarios. Those gray eyes stayed locked on mine, completely steady, ready to talk me through whatever chaotic thought tornado was currently destroying my brain.Except this wasn’t about sex or orgasms or research. This was just me and my overactive anxiety machine doing what it did best: turning simple problems into existential crises.“Don’t you have plans tonight? Business dinner? Hot date?” I asked, because surely a man like Alonzo Benington had better things to do on a Wednesday than babysit someone’s housing emergency. “I don’t want you canceling anything for me. You should go do your important billionaire stuff, but I’d feel weird staying here alone without you.”“Actually,” Alonzo said with that slight smile that suggested he found my rambling adorable instead of pathetic, “I do have plans tonight. But you’re welcome to join me.”Famous last words.

Allie snapped her book shut with a loud thwack, the sound cutting through the quiet like a slap. I glanced up from my laptop, where I’d been slogging through Southern Europe’s summer booking reports. Her groan was long and theatrical, forehead wrinkling so deep she looked carved from stone.“I am dealing with a conundrum,” she declared, pivoting her body toward me as though about to present a case in court.I leaned sideways, catching the title on the spine. “A conundrum about the sexual liberation movement of the sixties?”“Sort of.” She tapped her fingers against the book, drumming out her impatience.I closed the laptop with a sigh, bracing my elbows on the desk. “Alright. Let’s hear it.”Her tone sharpened. “I’m all for women owning their bodies, doing what they want, when they want—but Bruce said something to me while you were off having your little water-cooler talk with Ivanis. And she’s still a girl, not a woman. I think I should tell her mom.”My sto