All Chapters of Yours, Stepdad: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

59 Chapters

The Breaking Point

MICHAELA"It's not my dick, asshole, my dick works fine. I know because I've been using it outside for quite a while now. It's her."I'm about to surprise Sean, my husband, with his favorite meal, chicken nuggets and pasta, thinking that maybe tonight would be different. Maybe tonight he would actually look at me.I step inside quietly. The house smells like his cologne, the one I bought him for our second anniversary.His voice floats down the hallway from the living room and he's laughing loud, the way he used to laugh with me before everything changed.As I move closer, I can hear he's on speaker phone with other voices. His college friends. The ones who still call him every week to talk about sports and women and all the things men talk about when they think no one is listening."Bro, I haven't touched Michaela in almost a year." Sean laughs again, but this time it sounds cruel. "I literally can’t get hard for her. I've tried. It's like my dick just dies."The air leaves my lungs.

The Wolves at the Door

MICHAELAI don't sleep that night.I sit on the floor of my mother's destroyed house with my back against the wall and a kitchen knife in my hand, and every sound makes me jump. The house settling. The wind outside. A car passing on the street. I wait for whoever destroyed this place to come back and find me.No one comes.By morning, the fear has turned into something familiar. Gloria has been creating chaos my entire life. Running from landlords, dodging debt collectors, marrying men for their money and disappearing when the accounts ran dry. I should not be surprised that she has finally done something that brought violence to her door.I call her several times. Each call goes straight to a disconnected number. The mechanical voice tells me the line is no longer in service.Of course. Of course she changed her number without telling me.Gloria has always been a runner. A schemer. A woman who treated her only daughter as either a prop for her cons or an inconvenience to be left behi

The Reunion

MICHAELAThe drive to the penthouse takes four hours.I sit in the back of a black SUV with tinted windows, my heart pounding with dread about what the meeting will be like. The leather seats are cold against my legs. The driver doesn't speak. The two men in the front don't speak. We just move through the city in silence like a funeral procession.I feel like a prisoner being transported. Which, I suppose, is exactly what I am.My mind will not stop replaying every memory I have of Richie Moore. I can't make it stop, and frankly I don't want to. I need to remember who he was so I can understand who he has become.I was ten when I first saw him.A new school. Another one of Gloria's fresh starts that always ended the same way. I walked into English class with secondhand clothes and a chip on my shoulder and he was already there, sitting in the back corner. Dark hair falling into his eyes. A leather jacket that had seen better days. He didn't look at the teacher, didn't take notes. He j

The Contract

MICHAELAThe contract is at least fifty pages of small print and legal language designed to confuse and trap. I flip through it slowly, trying to understand what I am agreeing to.Page one outlines the terms of employment. One year of service. Room and board provided. No salary mentioned, no benefits. Just service in exchange for debt forgiveness.Page two makes my stomach turn.The words "private performances" stare up at me in black ink. Pole dancing. Physical availability at his discretion. Required attire to be provided by the employer. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination and legal action.What the fuck.I am not a lawyer. I scraped my way through high school while Gloria dragged me from town to town, scheme to scheme, fresh start to fresh start that always ended the same way. But I know exploitation when I see it dressed up in legal language. This contract doesn't want an employee. It wants a possession."I'm a baker now." I look up at him. He sits behind his d

The First Dance

MICHAELAI find the studio on the top floor of the penthouse after twenty minutes of wandering through hallways, following the directions Elena left outside my door. The entire floor is dedicated to this single room. Temperature controlled. Professionally lit. Mirrors covering every wall so I can't escape my own reflection no matter where I look.A chrome pole rises from the center of the polished hardwood floor, stretching from floor to ceiling, gleaming under the lights like it has been waiting.I stand in the doorway wearing the lingerie from the velvet box. The red lace cups my breasts, pushing them up, putting them on display. The thong cuts between my legs, leaving nothing to imagination. The garters frame my thighs but connect to nothing. I feel naked and exposed. Exactly like he wants me to feel.A robe hangs by the door. I wrap it tight around my body, giving myself one small mercy."You must be Michaela."I turn. A woman emerges from a side room I didn't notice. Tall and lea

THE SECOND LESSON

MICHAELAThe bruises announce themselves the moment I swing my legs out of bed.Inner thighs, both sides, deep purple-blue marks blooming under my skin from where the pole bit into me yesterday. I press my fingers against one and hiss. The pain is sharp and specific and somehow satisfying, the way sore muscles after a hard workout feel like proof of something.I survived yesterday. My body has the evidence.I pull on the robe Elena left outside my door and make my way to the studio.***Valentina is already there when I arrive. Stretching near the mirror wall, one leg extended at an angle that should be impossible. She straightens when I walk in and studies me the way a sculptor studies raw material."How do you feel?""Bruised.""Good." She says it like a compliment. "That means you worked. The bruises fade. The muscle memory stays."I drop the robe and approach the pole. The chrome is cool under my hands, solid and indifferent. I grip it and feel the familiar ache flare in my palms

WHAT HUNGER LOOKS LIKE

MICHAELASomething is different this morning and I know it before I reach the studio.Yesterday I stopped apologizing. Today my body remembers.It is a small thing, the way I walk down the hallway. Shoulders back. Chin level. Not performance, just the absence of the habitual flinch I have been carrying so long I stopped noticing it. Elena passes me near the elevator and I don't shrink to make room. I take up exactly as much space as I need.It feels strange. It feels right.***Valentina has the music already running when I arrive. Something with a low, patient pulse, the kind of rhythm that does not rush you."Today we invert properly," she says by way of greeting. "Are you ready?""No.""Good." She almost smiles. "Fear means you're paying attention."She walks me through the mechanics first. Where to grip, how to position my hips, how to use the momentum of the climb to carry me over rather than fighting my own weight. She demonstrates once, her body folding upward with the kind of

THE DRESS

MICHAELAThe message arrives with breakfast.Not from him. From Elena, who sets a tray on my bedside table.. black coffee, two slices of toast, a small bowl of fruit.. and places a folded notecard beside the cup with the careful precision of someone who has learned that the details matter in this household.I open it while the coffee is still steaming.*Mr. Moore requires your presence at the Hargrove Charity Gala this evening. A car will depart at seven. Your attire has been arranged.*That is all. No please. No question mark. No acknowledgment that I am a person who might have opinions about her own evening.I set the card down and drink my coffee.***The gown arrives at two in the afternoon.Two women carry it in a long white garment bag, moving through my room with the practiced efficiency of people who deliver expensive things to people who expect them. They hang it on the back of the closet door, unzip it with care, and step back.Deep emerald silk. Backless to the base of the

WOLVES IN EXPENSIVE SUITS

MICHAELAThe gala is held in a building that exists specifically to make people feel small.Vaulted ceilings. Chandeliers that probably cost more than most people's houses. Marble floors that amplify every footstep into something that sounds like arrival. The kind of room designed to remind you, constantly, of the distance between what you have and what the people around you have.I grew up knowing that distance by feel. I just never had to navigate it in emerald silk before.Richie moves through the room like he was built for it.That is the only word. Not comfortable, not confident. Built. Like this environment was part of his construction, like the cold marble and the practiced smiles and the art of saying nothing while implying everything are simply the medium he operates in. He shakes hands, holds eye contact for exactly the right duration, laughs at the right moments. Every interaction is calibrated to the millimeter.I watch him from the inside of it and feel the particular fas

THE EAST WING

MICHAELABack at the penthouse, Richie disappears.No goodnight. No dismissal. He simply walks through the lobby and turns toward his study and the door closes behind him and I am standing in the hallway in an emerald gown with nowhere to be and a mind that will not quiet down.I should sleep. My body is tired in the specific way of people who have been performing composure all evening, the exhaustion that comes not from moving but from holding perfectly still inside yourself while the world moves around you.I cannot sleep.I change out of the gown, hang it carefully because it costs more than I want to think about, put on cotton shorts and a loose shirt that belong to my real life. Then I walk.Past my room. Past the studio hallway. Deeper into the penthouse than I have gone before.The east wing is quieter than the rest of the apartment. The lighting is lower, warmer. The art on the walls changes.. less statement, more personal. A small framed photograph I slow down to examine: a l

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