Accueil / LGBTQ+ / My Stepbrother’s Cruel Obsession (BL) / Chapitre 151 - Chapitre 160

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151

THIRD PERSON POV The dry creaking of the floorboards woke Luke in the middle of the night.He remained static on the mattress, feeling the night's cold seep through the window's gap.The fatigue of fourteen hours of work still weighed on his bones, but the conversation with Tomás had ignited a fixed alert in his head.He looked at the newspaper on the nightstand, squeezed his hands with force, and let out a flat sigh.He wasn't going to fall back asleep.He stood up at a slow pace, walked to the small cracked porcelain sink, and splashed cold water on his face.Looking at himself in the stained mirror, he swept over his own features: the paleness of his cheeks, his messy hair, and the rigidity in his jaw.The panic that had accompanied him since the night of the gala had disappeared, leaving only a gelid rage.He dried his skin with the edge of his gray t-shirt and walked to the window to observe the service alley.Below, the sea crashed with a heavy rhythm against the wooden piles o

152

The door opened wide.Rusty entered the room with his right hand inside his jacket, searching for the grip of his semiautomatic pistol."The game of hide-and-seek at the dock is over!" Rusty snapped, a bloodthirsty smile drawing on his lips.Luke didn't even flinch.He remained standing next to the sink, drying his hands with a worn towel.He turned his face slowly toward the entrance, driving his pupils into his stepbrother's figure with a gelid coldness that froze the air in the room."I see you managed to get out of the federal cell, Rusty," Luke let out to him, his voice coming out flat, devoid of any trace of fear. "You really are a predictable guy."Rusty erased the smile from his features, surprised by the absolute lack of panic in the boy."Watch your words," Rusty threatened him, pulling out the firearm and pointing it straight at his chest. "You're going to walk with me to the car right now without uttering a single scream. You're going to become my boarding pass to force Fr

153

"Call the capital's federal patrol right now," I ordered in a gelid roar. "Hand this trash over to the prosecutors for parole violation. Make sure he rots in a maximum-security cell without bail. This time he never gets out.""Understood, Mr. Bayron," the officer nodded, grabbing Rusty by the arms to drag him away.I returned to the southern mansion close to midnight.I crossed the grand living room at a slow pace, feeling the suffocating silence of the building weigh on my shoulders.I looked at myself in the lobby mirror: I was completely haggard.My shirt was unbuttoned, I had a several days' growth of beard, and my eyes were injected with blood.I had destroyed every single one of my enemies.Richard was in absolute bankruptcy living on the street, Anastasia was isolated and ruined without her companies, and Rusty was back in a federal cell forever.I cleaned the city completely, but standing in the middle of the deserted living room, I felt an absolute emptiness devouring my entr

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Riley approached at a firm pace, looking at me with deep irritation."You cannot keep living in this manner, Frederick," she replied to me in a strict hiss. "You spend all day disappearing."I didn't answer her.I walked straight toward my office door to review the files. Riley chased me down the hallway, increasing the tone of her claims."Listen to me when I speak to you, Bayron!" she demanded of me, putting herself in front of the wood. "Almost a year has passed. Almost a year! This cannot go on like this. You are destroying your own life over a shadow."I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the living room and turned toward her with my eyes driven into her pupils."I know perfectly well where Luke is," I let out point-blank.Riley remained stunned in the middle of the hallway, opening her mouth without emitting a sound for five eternal seconds."What...?" she whispered, blinking. "You know where he is? And why the fuck haven't you gone to get him with your escort?!""Becaus

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LUKE'S POV I observed Frederick standing in front of me a scant few meters away.I felt how every fiber of my body reacted in an automatic way to his presence.Damn it.He looked ridiculously delicious; he ran down the stairs without a shirt, barefoot, wearing only cotton shorts, with his broad torso exposed and his muscles tense from agitation.He had messy hair and a heavy shadow of beard on his jawlines.My chest hurt from just looking at him.A current of heat and rancor ran through my spine, reminding me of the dense tension that had always consumed us in this mansion.I shook my head all at once to dissipate the thought, clenching my teeth to recover my gelid composure. I couldn't allow myself to fall into his game.I stretched out my hand firmly to him, forcing him to take the white letter-sized envelope."Take this, Frederick," I told him in a firm, flat voice.Frederick looked at the folder in his hands, passing his fingers over his face in desperation."Luke... please, don'

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I took a step backward, wrenching my clothes from his fingers so as not to let myself be dragged by the trauma."Stand up, Frederick," I ordered him in a gelid hiss. "Putting on a pathetic spectacle at the entrance of your house is not going to erase what occurred."Frederick stood up with difficulty, wiping his face with the back of his hand, breathing with difficulty."Just give me one opportunity to prove to you that this house is clean, little bird," he pleaded to me in a low voice, his gaze imploring. "Just one opportunity."I evaluated the situation in a matter of seconds.My lawyers in the capital needed at least five business days to check the divorce clauses against the central registry and verify that the university donations were released without legal traps."I am not going to withdraw the divorce lawsuit, Bayron," I sentenced to him, staring fixedly into his eyes. "But I will stay one last week while the lawyers review the certificates and finalize the legal dissolution o

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The man raised his sight from his documents, adjusting his gold-framed glasses."Mr. Bayron," Harrison said, standing up with coldness. "I didn't expect your presence in this building.""Let's save ourselves the ceremonies, Harrison," I told him, sitting in the leather armchair in front of his desk. "I came to resolve a matter of maximum priority regarding Luke Waid's academic file."The dean furrowed his brow, crossing his arms over the mahogany."Mr. Waid's case was closed by the Academic Council a couple of months ago," he reminded me in a strict tone. "He accumulated more than a month of unjustified absences and lost all the midterms of the first block. His expulsion is definitive according to regulations."I pulled a leather folder from my briefcase and slid it across the dean's desk."In that folder is the documentary proof that Luke's absence was due to a severe health condition and an illegal detention abroad by third parties," I lied to him with an absolute fixity in my gaze.

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I returned to the southern mansion at two in the afternoon.I carried in my hand the official envelope from the rectorate with the gold seal of the university campus.I crossed the deserted lobby, climbed the stone staircase at slow steps, and stopped in front of the door of the room at the back of the east wing.I knocked on the wood twice with my knuckles, maintaining my distance.*Knock, knock!*"Who is it?" Luke's voice asked from the interior, coming out dry, distant."It's me, Luke," I responded from the hallway, without attempting to turn the door handle. "I bring an official document that a university messenger just delivered."The door opened a couple of inches.Luke appeared at the threshold, wearing a simple cotton shirt.He looked tired, but the paleness of his cheeks had diminished a bit thanks to the food Elena had prepared for him in the morning.He looked at the envelope in my hand with evident distrust."A document from the university?" he asked, arching an eyebrow. "

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LUKE'S POV I walked in silence down the east wing hallway, holding the readmission sheet against my chest.It was impossible not to notice the difference.The mansion no longer smelled of cheap whiskey nor the suffocating plague of fear.The armed men who used to guard my bedroom door had completely disappeared.The staff treated me with an almost religious respect, without sideways glances or whispers in the corners.And Frederick... Frederick had transformed into a cautious stranger.He didn't come closer than a meter from me.He didn't raise his voice. He didn't use the imperative tone that used to echo off the walls when he ran customs.Seeing him appear barefoot on the stairs, haggard, bare-chested, and eyes flooded with tears begging for forgiveness on his knees, had opened a dangerous fissure in the armor of rancor I built during my escape at the fishing dock.His vulnerability was real.There was no trace of the arrogant monster who forced me to sign the marriage agreement.A

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"I am not leaving at the end of this week," I revealed to him, crossing my arms. "I will stay a full month in the east wing while I reorganize my subjects at the faculty."Upon hearing my words, Frederick's face underwent a radical transformation.The rigidity of his features crumbled completely, giving way to a glimmer of contained, almost desperate emotion.His pupils lit up with a pure warmth I had never seen in his years as a tyrant."A month...?" he repeated, his chest rising all at once from the agitation. "You are staying a whole month in the mansion, little bird?""A month," I reiterated, marking each syllable firmly so he wouldn't form false illusions. "With the same rules: you are not going to cross the hallway to my room, there will be no armed guards in the pavilion, and you are going to keep your hands off my clothes. If you break a single clause, I take my things and you never see my face again in your life.""I accept every single one of your conditions, Luke," Frederic

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