Semua Bab Dirty Stepbrother: Bab 11 - Bab 20

“Jae Castillo.”The chalk cracked against the board, and my head snapped up off my arms before I even knew I’d fallen asleep.“Sorry, sir.”Mr. Owens walked over, stood right in front of my desk, and the whole room turned to look at me the way rooms always did lately.“You either pay attention,” he said, “or you leave my classroom. Which is it going to be?”“Pay attention. I’m sorry.”He held my eyes a second longer, like he was deciding whether to believe me, then walked back to the board. I sat there with my heart still slamming and my head pounding behind my eyes, and I didn’t hear another word of that lecture.I hadn’t slept. Not really. My body still felt like it belonged to the club hands that grabbed, a stage that wouldn’t stop spinning even with my eyes shut.The cafeteria was worse.I felt it the second I walked in, heads turning, voices dropping into that specific hush that meant they were still talking about me, just quieter now, like I couldn’t hear it if they whispered.“…

Sebastian led me down a hallway lined with photos I didn’t stop to look at, into a kitchen that looked like nobody actually cooked in it.“Sit,” he said, nodding at a stool by the counter.“I’m not hungry.”“Didn’t ask if you were hungry.” He was already pulling things out of the fridge: eggs, bread, something wrapped in foil. “You’ve had seven hours on your feet and nothing but whatever you ate before your shift. Sit down.” I sat.He worked in silence for a few minutes, and I watched him move around his own kitchen with an ease that felt strange against everything else I knew about him: the cold stepbrother, the guy with the Mercedes and the perfect jaw and the reputation that preceded him into every room. Here, cracking eggs into a pan at one in the morning, he just looked like someone taking care of something.“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “Tonight. With that guy.”“Yes, I did.”“You could’ve gotten in trouble. With Archer. With whoever that man was.”“I don’t care.” He didn

The private room was already half full by the time I got downstairs, low light, the smell of cigars thick enough to sit in my throat.Archer caught me before I even made it to the back to change.“You’re late.”“Three minutes.”“Three minutes is late tonight.” He didn’t look up from the row of glasses he was inspecting on the bar. “These aren’t regulars. Behave.”I didn’t ask what that meant. I’d learned by now it never meant anything good.The room filled with slow suits, cologne, the specific kind of laughter that came from men who never had to think twice about a bill. I recognized two of them from before. The rest were new, older mostly, one of them barely glancing up from his phone the entire time Grey walked him through the room like he was selling real estate instead of people.I got through the first hour fine. Small talk, drinks poured, the usual distance I’d learned to keep even when their hands didn’t.It was somewhere past midnight when Grey found me by the bar.“Table by t

The car was outside by nine, exactly like Grey said it would be, black and silent, engine already running when I stepped out of the building.The driver didn’t say a word. Didn’t ask my name, didn’t confirm the address, just pulled off the second the door shut behind me, and I sat in the back watching the city thin out into wide, gated streets I’d never had a reason to see before.I still didn’t fully understand what I’d agreed to. Archer had barely explained it just handed me an address folded on a slip of paper and said “different terms this time” like that was supposed to mean something.The house at the end of the driveway looked like something out of a magazine, glass and stone lit gold from below. I stood there a second before the door opened on its own, and he was there same man from the club, silver at the temples, except in house clothes now instead of a suit, which somehow made him worse, not better.“You came,” he said, like it had genuinely been a question.“Wasn’t much of

I didn’t tell Sebastian I was going.I told myself it was because I hadn’t fully decided yet, even though the message on my phone said otherwise, even though nine o’clock was already close enough that lying about it felt less like a choice and more like something I’d already done the moment I hit send on that text.He texted while I was still sitting with the groceries on my kitchen counter, half unpacked.Sebastian: Pick you up for your shift?Me: I’m good tonight. Taking the night off, staying in.Sebastian: You never take nights off.Me: Needed one. Long day.Sebastian: Okay. Call me if you change your mind. I’ll come by anyway if you want the company.Me: I’m fine. Promise. Get some rest.I stared at the screen after I sent it, guilt sitting thick and immediate in my throat, heavier than it had any right to be for a handful of texts. I put my phone face down on the counter like that would help, and by the time I looked up again, the black car was already idling outside my building,