جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 6

_Ariana’s POV_ He said he was stressed from work and couldn’t make it to dinner again. So I decided to bring the birthday to him. what's the point of a birthday if you don’t celebrate it on the right day?. Cake in one hand, gift in the other, I kept telling myself that a smile was worth the traffic. The knock went unanswered. I called. No reply. The doorknob turned under my hand, and that’s when my stomach twisted. Adrian was paranoid about security. He double-locked everything. Always. The door shouldn’t have been open. I stepped inside and the silence felt wrong. Too quiet. Too still. “Babe? Adrian?” My voice sounded too bright, forced, fake. A designer bag by the door. A familiar pink scarf draped over the chair. Heels I recognized instantly. They weren’t mine. If they weren’t mine… then whose? My breath caught. I refused to let the thought form. There had to be an explanation. There always was. So I walked toward the bedroom, each step heavier than the last. The d

_Ariana's POV_I had just gotten to my apartment to find my mother home after a long while, then she broke it to me and just like that, without a chance to argue, I was boarding a plane to move all the way across the city. My head was still pounding from last night, and nothing about this felt real. We arrived at the airport where a car was waiting for us already. "Sweetie, we have dragged it long enough, it's time you meet your stepfather and stepbrother, you will love them both." I can't believe all this was happening. One moment I caught my best friend and boyfriend cheating, the next I made up with a stranger and now I had flown all the way across the city to meet my supposedly wealthy stepfather and stepbrother who I knew nothing about but his name - Kian Mercer -.The car stopped so abruptly my teeth clicked together. We’d arrived at the mansion. It wasn’t just big. It was obscene. Three stories of white stone and glass, ivy crawling up the columns like it had been growing

*Kian’s POV*Family. Right. Like that word meant anything to me five minutes ago. Mrs. Vivienne and Mercer were at the door, all polite smiles and low voices. No cheek kisses, no drawn-out hugs. Just the kind of goodbye adults give when there’s nothing real behind it. Mercer clapped me on the shoulder on his way out. “There’s a client I want you to call later this evening. 8 PM. Don’t forget.” “Noted,” I said. The door closed. Silence settled back into the house like it belonged there. And there she was. Ariana. Still sitting across from me, pretending the table was a safe distance. Her eyes kept dropping to her plate, then flicking back up when she thought I wasn’t looking. She was tense. Wound tight like she expected me to say something stupid. I didn’t. I watched her instead. The way her fingers curled around the edge of the table. The way she shifted in her seat like she couldn’t get comfortable with me in the room. Like she could pretend last night on that hotel bed n