Semua Bab The Dare to Ruin Him, Falling for My Step Brother : Bab 121 - Bab 130

SEBASTIAN'S POV"You are still on the floor."Eli looked up at me from where he was sitting against the bed like he had not moved an inch since I slid down the wall beside him twenty minutes ago."So are you." He replied."I am aware of that." I replied."Then why are you announcing it." He replied.I looked at him.He looked back at me with those dark eyes of his completely steady in the low light coming under the door and the city still going outside and the house still quiet around us and everything between us finally named and sitting there and neither of us apparently in any rush to do anything about the floor situation."Eli." I said."Hmm.""We are in love." I said."Yes." He replied."And we are sitting on your floor." I said."Also yes." He replied."In the dark." I said."Sebastian." He said."What." I said."Stop narrating." He said.I looked at him.He looked back at me.Then he reached over and gripped my collar and pulled me toward him and kissed me once — brief, certain

SEBASTIAN'S POV"She was there."The words came out quietly on the path and Eli stood beside me with his phone in his hand and the video still sitting on the screen between us and the cold morning campus completely indifferent around us."She watched Devon put something in your drink." I said. "She stood right behind him and watched and said nothing."Eli said nothing."She signed the bet contract." I continued. "She was at the party. She watched the hazing. She watched all of it and built a legal case on the wreckage of something she could have stopped.""Yes." Eli said simply."And she left this morning before the hearing." I said. "Before this video could surface.""She knew Devon would send it." Eli said. "The moment she withdrew her support he had nothing left to protect." He looked at me directly. "He sent it to me because he knew you would protect her even now. He knew I would not."I looked at him.He looked back at me."What do we do with it?" I pressed."Mr George." He said

SEBASTIAN'S POV Nobody moved. The torchlight swept across the glass panel again. Slower this time. Deliberate. Eli was still crouching in front of me with his hand on the remote and his eyes on the door and his entire body completely still. The electrode pads still active on my thighs and stomach at setting four and I was biting down so hard on my lip I could taste blood and gripping the rope behind the chair with everything I had and staring at the back of Eli's head and trying to remember how breathing worked. The torchlight held on the glass panel. One second. Two. Three. Eli did not move a single inch. I did not move a single inch. The setting four current kept running and I pressed my lips together and stared at the ceiling and counted and felt sweat running down my spine and genuinely could not tell if the shaking in my legs was the electrode pads or the specific terror of a security guard standing twelve inches away from a glass door. Both probably. Definitely both.

SEBASTIAN'S POV"Sit down."Selena was standing at the window when I walked into the sitting room. Her back to me. Her hands folded behind her. The specific posture I had known my entire life that meant she was composing herself before turning around.She turned around.Her eyes were red.I had never seen my mother's eyes red before in my entire life.I sat down.She stayed standing for a moment. Looking at me with an expression I had no reference for. No category. Nothing in twenty two years of knowing her face that matched what was sitting on it right now.Then she sat down across from me."I am not going to make a speech." She said quietly. "I am not going to explain or justify or contextualise." She looked at her hands in her lap. "I watched Devon put something in Eli's drink and I said nothing. I signed that contract and I said nothing. I let all of it run because it suited what I was building and I told myself that was strategy and it was not strategy." She looked up at me. "It

SEBASTIAN'S POV"She is withdrawing the filing."Lucas put his coffee cup down and said it like he was reporting the weather.I stared at him. "When?""Her new lawyer filed the withdrawal this morning." He picked his cup back up. "It is done."Eli looked up from his plate.Bianca reached for the juice without looking at either of us.The kitchen was completely ordinary. Toast. Eggs. Lucas's newspaper. Morning light through the window. Tuesday deciding to be Tuesday regardless of everything happening inside it."You knew last night." I said slowly."You needed to sleep." He replied simply. He picked up his newspaper. "You have not slept properly in three weeks."I looked at Eli.He looked back at me with the corner of his mouth doing the thing it did when he was trying not to smile."The board investigation continues regardless." Lucas confirmed from behind his newspaper. "Separate proceedings. She understands that." Another page turn. "She is cooperating fully."The kitchen was quiet.