Semua Bab The Scandalous Step Siblings: First Enemies, Then Lovers : Bab 1 - Bab 10

Anya’s povI closed my laptop with a quiet, decisive thud—the sound of a door slamming shut on an entire career. Below the screen, the final headline of the night glared back at me: Kai Rhodes: A Monument to Mediocrity, Or Just a Man Who Needs a New Hobby? It was vicious. It was unfair. It was exactly what our readers at The Spotlight loved.“Three thousand words of pure, unadulterated bile, Anya,” Maya’s voice chirped from the Bluetooth speaker in the corner of my small, cramped office. She was probably balancing her phone on her shoulder while stirring her third cup of coffee, despite the clock pushing past midnight. “Did you really have to use the word ‘flaccid’ seven times to describe his latest live album?”I stretched, wincing as my back protested the long hours hunched over this cheap, second-hand desk. The chair cushion was flat enough to be a decorative coaster.“It was artistically justified, Maya,” I retorted, pulling my messy, dark hair into a tighter bun. “The man has bee

Anya’s pov9:00 am.The building wasn’t a building; it was a vertical monument to who had the biggest wallet. It was a dizzying tower of glass and steel in Manhattan’s financial district, perched so high it probably got nosebleeds. It smelled like Italian leather, fresh money, and the ozone that clings to expensive, clean air.I’m not saying I have a death wish, but I did wake up this morning thinking my odds of success were roughly equal to a snowball’s chance in hell. And yet, here I was, standing in the lobby of a building so aggressively wealthy it probably had a gold-plated fire escape. It was the headquarters of Titan Management, perched so high in Manhattan’s financial district that the other buildings looked like my discarded LEGO creations.It smelled like a million dollars, specifically the kind of money that buys Italian leather furniture and ozone generators to filter out the stench of us mere mortals. It reeked of pure, concentrated ambition, and it was the domain of Etha

Anya’s POVThe Next Day, 4:00 pmThe escrow account was open. The money was a numerical ghost, waiting in the digital ether. I stared at the contract copies spread across my desk, the bold signature of Anya Sharma glaring up at me. It felt less like a professional agreement and more like a binding spell. Ethan Cole had my ambition, my mission, and now, my immediate future, locked down with two cold, calculated stipulations:I must act as Kai Rhodes’s Personal Assistant for the entire month-long final leg of his tour.If I published anything negative or unauthorized—a single sentence, a private email, a hint of my true opinion, I would forfeit the colossal payment, and my NGO dream would collapse before it even started.It was the cruelest catch, a perfect trap sprung by a man who was as brilliant as he was beautiful. He wasn’t just buying my writing; he was buying my silence and my servitude. He had found the exact point of vulnerability where my alter ego was powerless, my deepest, m

Anya’s povEthan's voice cuts through the door: "It doesn't matter what you want, Kai! The sponsors are breathing down my neck. If you don't finish this tour, the breach of contract lawsuits will bury you. You’ll be in a courtroom for the next ten years, and they’ll take every cent you have left!"Kai's gravelly reply: "Let them take it. I can't play, Ethan. I'm a circus act now. And you brought a vulture on board to narrate my funeral."Ethan: "Anya Sharma is your insurance policy. Without her 'authorized' story, the police are going to keep digging into that night. You want the truth of that crash to stay buried? Then you make her believe you're a victim of fate, not a liability."Anya’s heart hammers. What truth? She presses closer to the wood, her journalistic instincts screaming. This is the "dirt" she needs.Suddenly, the door handle turns.The door didn’t just open; it was yanked back with such violence that I stumbled forward, my hands flying out to catch myself against the do

Anya’s POV10:27 AM — Somewhere in the MidwestBy the time the sponsors finally left the bus, I had perfected the art of smiling without warmth.My cheeks hurt. My jaw ached. My soul felt like it needed a very long shower and possibly an exorcism.“Great energy today,” one of the lawyers said as he stepped down the bus stairs, flashing me a grin that suggested he’d bill Kai for breathing oxygen. “Really strong recovery narrative.”Recovery narrative.That was what we were calling this now. Not a man whose hand had been filleted by fate and bad decisions, but a narrative. A consumable arc with bullet points and sponsors.I waited until the doors hissed shut behind them before letting my smile collapse.Ben exhaled loudly beside me. “Well. That was fun. Only three more weeks of this and I can retire to a beach and let tinnitus take me.”I checked my clipboard, because if I didn’t cling to tasks, I might start screaming. “Kai’s press walk-through is in forty minutes. Ethan wants him dres