All Chapters of The Scandalous Step Siblings: First Enemies, Then Lovers : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Anya's POV The morning light in the hospital was not kind at all, as it seemed to highlight every single gray speck in the linoleum and cast a harsh glare on the deep, dark circles under Kai’s eyes that made him look like a ghost of the man I had first met. He had been awake for over an hour, just staring at a plastic tray of scrambled eggs and dry toast like it was some kind of impossible puzzle that he simply could not solve, his fingers twitching near the edge of the tray but never quite making a move."You really have to try and eat something, Kai," I said, leaning forward in that squeaky vinyl chair until I could catch his downward gaze, "because the doctors are worried that your blood sugar is bottoming out and you won't be able to recover if you don't start fueling your body properly."He finally looked up at me, but he just pushed the tray away with a trembling hand that caused the fork to make a loud, lonely rattling sound against the plastic. "It honestly tastes just like p

Anya’s POVThe comment section on the livestream was a digital avalanche, comments pouring in so fast the screen couldn’t keep up. At first it was ugly—raw and vicious. Hashtags like “Free Kai” and “Save Kai” flooded the feed, mixed with wild accusations that I was drugging him, manipulating him, forcing him to say these things on camera.People called me every name in the book, from gold-digger to witch. Some even dug up old clips of my reviews and twisted them into proof that I’d been planning this all along. The hate felt personal, like a thousand strangers had decided I was the villain of the hour.But as Kai kept talking, something shifted. The rhythm of the internet began to change right in front of my eyes. The angry caps-lock rants slowed. Questions started appearing. Then doubts. Then outright anger aimed somewhere else.“I am not a victim of Anya Miller,” Kai said. His voice had found a raspy, jagged strength I hadn’t heard in days. It cracked in places, but that only made i

Anya’s POVThe basement of the Federal Building in Denver didn’t have windows. It had nothing but fluorescent lights that hummed with a low, headache-inducing frequency, the kind that drilled straight into your temples after the first ten minutes.The walls were painted a dull gray, the exact color of a rainy sidewalk, and the air smelled faintly of burnt coffee and old paper. I sat across from Marshal Vance—no relation to Ethan, though the name still felt like a cruel, personal joke—while he tapped a slow, rhythmic beat on the edge of a thick manila folder. His fingers moved like he was keeping time to music only he could hear.“Ethan’s office is a charcoal pit,” the Marshal said. He wasn’t looking at me. His eyes stayed fixed on the screen in front of him, reflecting a mess of red-coded data that flickered across his glasses. “But he didn’t burn everything. He left a breadcrumb trail in the cloud. A very specific, very ugly trail.”“The Project_Revenge files,” I said. My voice came

Anya’s POVThe safe house wasn’t a house at all. It was an old ranger’s cabin tucked deep into a quiet fold of the San Juan Mountains, miles from the nearest paved road and even farther from anything that resembled the world we’d just escaped. The drive up had been long and winding, the SUV bouncing over dirt tracks that felt like they hadn’t been used in years. When we finally arrived, the air hit me like a clean slap—cold pine, damp earth, and the faint, sharp scent of snow still clinging to the higher peaks. No bleach. No smoke from burning offices. No artificial perfume or hospital disinfectant. Just real air, the kind that made your lungs feel awake again.There were no cameras hidden in the corners. No cell service blinking in and out. No glowing screens feeding us headlines about who we were supposed to be or what scandal was trending. The silence wrapped around the cabin like a blanket, thick and almost unnerving after months of constant noise.“It’s quiet,” Kai said.He was

Anya’s POVThat night, the snow began to fall. It started as a fine, white dust drifting past the cabin windows, almost too delicate to notice. By the time we finished the last of the soup and washed the bowls in the small sink, it had turned into a heavy, wet blanket that muffled the world even further. The wind had died down, leaving only the soft, constant hush of flakes piling against the glass and the roof. Everything outside felt sealed away distant, unreachable, wrapped in white silence.We sat by the fire, the orange glow dancing across the rough wooden walls and casting long, flickering shadows that moved like slow dancers. The stone fireplace radiated a deep, steady warmth that soaked into my bones after the sharp cold of the day. I had curled up in the old armchair with a dusty paperback mystery from the 1970s I’d found on the shelf—yellowed pages, cracked spine, the kind of story where everything got solved by the final chapter. The words were comforting in their simplic