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Todos os capítulos de The Scandalous Step Siblings: First Enemies, Then Lovers : Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

174 Capítulos

71

Anya's POV I really thought Ethan was the smartest guy in the room, but it turns out he’s just the best at hiding his receipts, and for the next three days, I gave him the performance of a lifetime.I played the role of the defeated pet to perfection because I knew he was watching my every move. I sat in the conservatory with my legal pad and just stared blankly at the floor like my soul had been scooped out with a spoon. I fetched his green juices without saying a single word of protest and I let him see exactly what he wanted—the "broken" Anya Sharma, the girl who finally realized her mother was never coming back to save her."The tone of the third chapter is much better, Anya," Ethan said on Thursday morning, and he was leaning over my shoulder while I typed in the library, smelling like expensive cologne and a victory he hadn't actually earned yet. "The grief is... palpable. It adds a certain gravitas to Kai’s struggle, so keep going like this.""I'm just glad my trauma is artisti

72

AnyaIf life was a joke, I was definitely the punchline, and Ethan was the one laughing all the way to the bank while I stood in his kitchen trying to remember how to breathe without tasting his smugness. The estate didn't even feel like a home anymore, it felt like a giant stomach that was slowly digesting me, and every inhale was just more cedar, bourbon, and that faint metallic edge of Kai’s sweat that seemed to be stuck to the back of my throat.After Ethan’s big "victory" over my mother’s memory, the house’s gravity had basically rewritten itself, and now the walls just watched me with hungry eyes while Kai became a constant, half-naked interruption to my daily performance of being a ruined little pet.I was in the kitchen, absolutely stabbing at the espresso machine like it had personally offended me, when he appeared out of nowhere looking like a sin I wasn't allowed to confess.No shirt, of course, because apparently being a rockstar means you’re allergic to fabric.Those low-

73

Anya's POV The "treatment" in that suite lasted way longer than it actually needed to, but neither of us was counting the minutes because every single touch felt like a calculated risk. It was like we were speaking a secret language written in the pressure of my fingers against his skin, and the air was so thick with the smell of his skin and the heat of the room that I was surprised the smoke detectors hadn't gone off yet."You’re actually getting better at this," Kai murmured, and his voice was thick and low as I worked my thumbs into the tension of his forearm. "The PA life suits you, Anya. Maybe when this mess is finally over, I’ll just hire you full-time. You can handle my PR and my coffee, and I’ll pay you exclusively in sarcasm and late-night arguments.""In your dreams, Rhodes," I whispered back, even though my heart was doing a triple-time rhythm against my ribs that he could probably feel through the floor. "When this is over, I’m changing my name and moving to a country th

74

Anya’s POVThe drawing room of the estate had been transformed into something unnecessarily unnerving, like a high-end corporate lounge someone had tried to pass off as intimate, and the cozy shadows I’d grown used to—the ones that softened the edges of the heavy furniture and made the world feel small enough for us to hide in—were officially gone.In their place were bright, unforgiving LED lights that displayed with a low, electric vibration, making every surface look harsh and exposed, turning the expensive velvet and wooden into something that looked like it belonged in an interrogation room at a black-site prison.Three men in charcoal suits sat in a neat row on the leather sofa, looking like they’d been stamped out of the same industrial mold as Ethan’s particular brand of coldness: expensive, precise, and completely devoid of anything resembling a human soul, and they watched the room with the kind of dead-eyed intensity people usually reserve for watching stocks crash or build

75

Anya’s POVLila didn’t just touch Kai. She acted like she was the one who had built him from scratch.Every single move she made was so slow and so deliberate, like she had practiced this exact scene in front of a mirror until it looked like a movie. She knelt right between his knees on the hardwood floor, her back perfectly straight but her shoulders soft, and she radiated a kind of calm that felt like a personal attack on me. I was a jagged, sleepless mess after the last few days, and here she was, looking like a literal saint.The sponsors in the room leaned forward in their seats, and I could hear their expensive leather shoes squeaking against the floor like hungry animals, while Ethan stood right behind them with his arms crossed, watching everything with the quiet smile of a director who knew his actors were doing a great job.“The scars are healing so beautifully, Kai,” Lila whispered.Her voice had this soft, ringing sound to it, like a bell that was quiet enough to feel priv

76

Anya’s POVI retreated to the library, the one room in this sprawling glass-and-marble cage that didn’t feel like it was actively trying to suffocate me. The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with books nobody ever read—leather spines, gold lettering, the faint dusty smell of old paper that somehow felt more honest than anything else in this house. I dropped into the worn leather chair behind the desk, opened my laptop, and stared at the blinking cursor like it owed me money. I needed to write the fifteen hundred words Ethan wanted. Something about “the touch of a healer bringing the music back to Kai’s soul.” It was going to be nauseating. I already hated every sentence before I typed it.“You’re brooding, Critic. It’s a bad look on you.”I didn’t turn around. I knew that voice the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat when it’s racing. Low, rough around the edges, the same one that had been slipping into my dreams and turning my waking hours into a slow-burning war zone.“Go

77

Anya’s POVThe laptop screen flickered, throwing a cold, blue glow across the warm mahogany panels of the library. It should have felt clinical, detached—like the rest of this house—but the heat rolling off Kai’s body turned the whole room into something else entirely. A fever. Slow-burning, impossible to ignore.He didn’t kiss me right away. He waited. Deliberately. He leaned in until the tip of his nose brushed mine, close enough that I could feel the uneven hitch in his breath, the way it caught and held in the narrow space between our mouths. It was punishment, and we both knew it. I was punishing him for letting Lila touch him like that in front of everyone. He was punishing me for caring enough to hate it.“You think you’re so hard to read,” he murmured, voice low and rough. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, slow, almost reverent, until it stopped right at the corner of my mouth. “But your eyes give you away every time, Anya. You hated her hands on me.”“I hated the theater o

78

Anya’s POVI spent the next three hours hunched over the keyboard, shoulders tight, eyes burning from the blue glare of the screen.The library had grown steadily colder as the night bled into early morning, the kind of chill that seeps into your bones no matter how many layers you’re wearing. The fire in the hearth had died down to a faint orange glow, barely enough to push back the shadows creeping along the bookshelves. Every so often I’d pause, flex my fingers, and listen to the house settling around me—creaks in the floorboards, the distant hum of the HVAC system, the occasional soft click of something settling in the walls. It felt alive, watchful, like the estate itself was taking notes on me.I didn’t write about Lila’s “healing touch.” Not a single sentence about angelic hands or miraculous recovery. Instead I wrote about the clinical coldness of that drawing room—the way the LED lights stripped every surface bare, turning warmth into something clinical and unforgiving. I des

79

Anya’s POVThe estate was tomb-quiet at four in the morning. Ethan’s control was absolute, but even he had to sleep, or at least dock himself into whatever cold charging station he used to maintain his perfection. I had been pacing the library for hours, the taste of Lila’s condescension still bitter in the back of my throat, when I heard it. A single, muffled chord. It wasn't the polished, over-produced sound of the records. It was raw. It was a bruise turned into a sound.I followed the vibration down the service stairs to the soundproofed basement studio. The door was heavy, reinforced steel, but it hadn't been latched. I pushed it open just an inch, the scent of expensive cedar and electrical heat hitting me instantly.Kai was sitting on a low stool in the center of the room. He wasn't under the bright LED lights Ethan favored. He had turned on a single amber floor lamp that cast long, distorted shadows against the acoustic foam of the walls. He was cradling an old acoustic guitar

80

Anya’s povThe smell of burnt toast and expensive floor wax signaled the start of another day in the panopticon. I didn’t go to the dining hall. I went straight to Ethan’s office, the weight of the laptop in my bag feeling like a live round of ammunition. I hadn’t slept. My eyes felt like they were full of sand, and my skin was humming with the residual frequency of Kai’s basement rehearsal.Ethan was sitting behind his glass desk, silhouetted against the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the manicured, lifeless gardens. He didn't look up when I entered. He was swiping through a tablet, his face illuminated by the pale glow of data points and schedule blocks.I placed the laptop on the desk with a sharp click. There is your draft, Ethan. It is fifteen hundred words of exactly what you asked for. The vulnerability of the artist. The steady hand of the healer. The triumph of the human spirit over physical adversity. It is a masterpiece of corporate propaganda.Ethan finally l

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