All Chapters of Forbidden Love with my stepbrother : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Elara's POV"Start from the beginning," I said. "All of it."Daniel looked at the water for a moment. Then he nodded and we walked, the three of us, slow and without direction along the shoreline while he talked.He had met my mother twenty three years ago at a conference Victor had hosted for business contacts and their associates. She was there with a friend. Daniel was there because Victor had hired him as a financial consultant for a short term project. They were introduced at dinner and talked for three hours and he said he knew before the night was over that she was someone he would not forget easily."We were together for eight months," he said. "Quietly. Victor did not know at the time. Your mother ended it when Victor asked her to marry him. She chose stability. I understood it. I did not like it but I understood."I kept walking. "She was already pregnant.""She did not know yet. She told me six weeks after she ended things. By then she and Victor were engaged." He paused. "

Elara's POVAlexander left the photograph on the kitchen table the following morning. A small envelope with my name on it in handwriting I did not recognise. I picked it up and turned it over once before I opened it.The photograph inside was old. The colour had gone slightly warm the way photographs from that era did, the edges soft. My mother stood in a garden somewhere I did not recognise. Summer. She was laughing at something off camera, her head turned slightly, her hair loose. She looked young in a way that was hard to absorb. Not just younger. Unguarded. Like the version of her that existed before she decided who she was going to be.I sat down with it.I had seen photographs of Mom when she was young before. The ones she kept in the album in the living room. But those were posed. Holidays. Birthdays. This one was different. Someone had caught her in an unguarded moment and she did not know she was beautiful in it and that made it the most honest image of her I had ever seen.I

Elara's POVDaniel had chosen a small cafe two streets from the water. Not the beach town where we had met the first time. A different coast, neutral ground, his suggestion. I had looked it up the night before. Plain exterior, good reviews, the kind of place that did not try too hard. That told me something about him I filed away without deciding what to do with it yet.Damien drove me to the train station in the morning. He did not offer to come and I did not ask him to. This was mine to do alone and we both understood that without discussing it.On the platform he held my hand for a moment. "Call me after," he said."I will.""Not if it goes well. Either way."I looked at him. "Either way," I said.The train took an hour and twenty minutes. I sat by the window and watched the landscape move and tried not to rehearse. Every time I started building a version of the conversation in my head I stopped myself. Daniel was not a script. He was a person I did not know yet and the only honest

Damien's POVElara was already on the phone when I arrived. She stood at the window with her back to the door, one hand holding the phone and the other pressed flat against the glass, which meant the call was either difficult or important. I set my coffee down quietly and did not interrupt.She turned when she heard me. Held up one finger.I sat and opened my laptop and listened without appearing to listen."I understand the timeline is tight," she said. "But the terms we agreed do not reflect what you are asking for now. That is a scope change and it needs to go back through the process." A pause. "I am not saying no. I am saying the original agreement does not cover this and we need to be honest about that before we move forward." Another pause, shorter. "Good. Send it through in writing and I will have something back to you by end of day."She hung up and turned around."Hartley," she said. "They want to add two regional routes to the first contract without adjusting the fee.""Wha

Elara's POV"Remember what you said on the beach," Damien said from the doorway.I picked up my bag. "I remember.""All of it. Not just the easy parts."I looked at him. "I know what I said, Damien."He held my gaze for a second. Then he nodded and stepped aside and I went down the stairs and out the front door into the grey morning.The train was quieter than last time. A Tuesday crowd, unhurried, people with newspapers and coffee and nowhere urgent to be. I found a window seat and watched the city thin out and tried to do what I had told myself I would do. Show up without a prepared version. Let it be what it actually was.The call between Mom and Daniel had lasted forty minutes. She had not told me everything that was said and I had not asked. What I knew was that she had told him the truth about the letters and he had listened and at the end he had asked only about Thursday. That told me enough about the shape of him.The cafe was the same as last week. He was already there, same