All Chapters of Forbidden Love with my stepbrother : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Damien's POV"You are nervous," Elara said.I poured coffee and did not answer."You checked the time three times in the last ten minutes.""I am not nervous."She leaned against the counter and looked at me with the particular expression she used when she had already decided she was right and was waiting for me to catch up. "You are meeting my biological father for the first time. You are allowed to be nervous.""I am not nervous about meeting him. I am thinking about the Hartley follow up call.""The Hartley call is not until three."I drank my coffee.She smiled and pushed off the counter and went to answer the door.I heard them in the hallway. Her voice easy and familiar, his slightly more careful, the particular register of someone still learning the acoustics of a new relationship. Then they came into the kitchen and Daniel Voss looked at me across the room and I looked at him and we both did the thing people do when they are assessing each other and trying not to be obvious ab

Elara's POVHe was already at the table when we arrived. Both of us this time. He stood when he saw Damien come through the door behind me and something in his face recalibrated quickly, the way it did when he was adjusting to something he had prepared for but not quite anticipated.We sat. The waitress came. We ordered the same coffee as always and Daniel ordered tea which I had not seen him do before and filed away."You both came," he said."We both came," I said. "There is something we need to tell you and it was easier than explaining why Damien knew and you did not."He looked between us. Not alarmed. More the careful attention of someone who had learned not to brace too early. "All right," he said.Damien told him. Clean and direct, the way he did everything. Tobias Farr. The monitoring list. The conclusion Walsh had reached. He did not soften it and he did not inflate it. He gave Daniel the accurate version and then stopped talking.Daniel looked at the table. The waitress bro

Elara's POVMom was up before seven. I heard her moving around the kitchen from my room, the particular sound of someone who had not slept well and had decided to be useful instead. Drawers opening and closing. The oven warming. The quiet industry of a woman managing her nerves through cooking.I came down at eight. She had already made pastries from scratch and was working on something that smelled like the chicken dish she reserved for occasions she considered significant."You did not have to do all this," I said.She looked at the counter. "I needed something to do with my hands."I poured coffee and sat at the table and let her have the kitchen. Damien came down twenty minutes later, read the room immediately, and went to set the table in the dining room without being asked. I heard him in there, the quiet movement of someone making a space feel considered rather than formal.Alexander arrived at ten. Mom had invited him and I was glad she had. He provided a particular kind of ba

Damien's POVThe place I knew was forty minutes from the office by cab, far enough from our usual radius that the chances of running into anyone connected to Meridian or the past several months were effectively zero. Small Italian restaurant on a side street, no reservation system, the kind of lighting that meant the food was confident enough not to need atmosphere as a distraction.Elara looked at the menu for thirty seconds and put it down. "You have been here before.""Once. Two years ago.""With who.""A client dinner that ran long and ended badly. The food was the only good part." I put my own menu down. "I remembered it."She looked around the room. Four other tables occupied, none of them paying attention to us. The waiter came and we ordered without deliberating and he left and we were just two people at a table with nothing urgent pressing in from any direction.It still felt slightly unfamiliar. The absence of urgency. I was aware of it the way you were aware of a sound stop

Elara's POVThe apartment had three pieces of furniture in it. A bed we had arranged delivery for because sleeping on the floor was a line Damien had drawn early in the moving conversation. A lamp. A single chair in the main room that had come with the place and that neither of us had decided what to do with yet.Everything else was boxes.We had carried the last of them up at eight. Alexander had helped with the larger ones and left at nine with the particular expression of a man who understood when his presence was no longer the point. Mom had sent food in containers that were stacked in the compact kitchen alongside the coffee machine, which had been the first thing unpacked, non negotiable, Damien's only hard requirement of the entire move.Now it was just us. The lamp throwing a small circle of light in the main room. The street quiet outside the window. The particular silence of a space that had not yet learned the sound of us.Damien stood by the window looking at the street be