Alle Kapitel von I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION : Kapitel 131 – Kapitel 140

Tuesday came way too fast, and somehow still not fast enough. I dressed like a woman who had nothing in the world to hide, because that was the assignment I’d given myself. Dark trousers. A clean, high-necked blouse, my hair pulled back into something simple and unpretentious. It was the exact kind of face the firm preferred you to wear when they dragged you into a room with Legal. Luca watched me from the kitchen doorway while I forced myself to pour a cup of coffee I didn't actually want. The space between us still wasn't the ordinary, comfortable kind. He had come back to the bed last night in a purely technical sense, but he hadn't come back to me. “Reid is meeting you in the lobby at ten,” he said, his voice flat. “I won't be in the room unless they explicitly ask for me. Anita said they want to get your account first, separate from mine.” “I know.” “If they ask about family, you answer the exact question they asked, not the one hiding underneath it.” “I know, Luca.” He ga

NYRA'S POV Thursday morning smelled like photocopy toner and cold rain. Luca’s interview with Legal and HR was locked in for nine o'clock in the same sterile conference room where I had sat two days before. He didn't ask me to walk him down the hall. He didn't offer any parting advice. He just stood by the kitchen island, buttoning the cuffs of a fresh shirt with long, mechanical movements, his jaw set so tight the muscle beneath his clean-shaven skin flickered once, twice. “Reid is sitting in with him,” Clara muttered, sliding a stack of deal files onto my desk around eight-forty-five. She didn't look up from her screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a clatter that sounded like dry bones. “And Colebridge is physically on the floor. First time he’s hovered outside executive suites since the merger.” “Is he inside the room?” I asked, my voice flat, keeping my eyes fixed on an email I had already read three times. “Not yet. But he’s parked in the glass office at the

NYRA'S POV The front door didn't just open; it felt pushed, as if the hallway air itself had been waiting to flood the room with cold pressure. Mum walked in wearing her sharp slate coat, wet from the rain, holding her bag against her side like armor. Her hair was pulled back tightly, showing every line of tension around her eyes...lines that had deepened over the last forty-eight hours until she looked ten years older. She didn't take off her shoes. She stood on the hardwood just past the entry mat, her eyes sweeping the hallway, the kitchen, and finally settling on the closed study door down the hall. “He’s in there?” she asked. Her voice was low, strained, stripped of any maternal warmth. “Yes,” I said, locking the deadbolt behind her. “Keep your voice down.” “Keep my voice down,” she repeated, a bitter, breathless laugh catching in her throat. “That’s what you’re worried about, Nyra? That he hears me?” She pulled off her gloves with sharp, jerking motions and shoved them in

Monday morning arrived like an execution date.The board had called an emergency meeting for nine o'clock, but they didn't ask me to attend. They explicitly told Luca that my presence on the floor would create a "security hazard and a public distraction." By eight a.m., I was officially placed on mandatory, unpaid administrative leave pending the final outcome of the ethics board review.Translation: Stay hidden in your hole so the firm doesn't have to look at you.The headlines over the weekend hadn't died down...they had morphed into a complete media frenzy. Because I was still legally married to Richard, the press had turned the story into a feeding frenzy. “The Adulterous Step-Sister.” “The Executive, The Wife, and The Step-Brother.” They framed me not just as a corporate schemer, but as an immoral, unfaithful woman playing house with her own step-brother while her marriage fell apart.Luca left the apartment at eight. He had barely slept a full hour. His face was gray, his eyes b

NYRA'S POV I didn't scream. I didn't cry either. After hearing what Luca said through that cracked door, a strange, cold numbness took over my entire body. The tears just completely dried up in my eyes. I backed into the master bedroom step by slow step, shut the door without making a sound, and walked over to the bed. I sat down on the edge of the mattress and stared straight ahead at the dark, blank television screen on the wall. My hands were ice-cold, resting flat in my lap. I didn't tremble. I didn't throw anything. I didn't smash a glass against the wall. I just sat there in the dim gray light filtering through the heavy curtains, feeling like a thick, unbreakable sheet of ice had settled over my heart. A few minutes later, the study door finally clicked open. Luca’s heavy footsteps moved down the long hallway, slow and dragging like he was carrying lead weights in his shoes. He walked into the master bedroom, looking like a man who had just survived a brutal, bloody stree