All Chapters of I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The email came in at 6:52 in the morning. Before Nyra had even arrived. Before Clara had unlocked her station. I almost missed it entirely, buried under the usual overnight noise from our Asia office. It was from a contact at Meridian Partners...a competitor I’d spent a decade learning to respect and dislike in roughly equal measure. Congratulating me, with an unmistakable edge of amusement, on a deal I hadn’t yet closed. I read it twice before the meaning actually landed. Heard you and Henderson finally worked things out. Glad someone did...we’d been circling that account for months. Congrats on locking in the delivery terms before we could counter. We hadn’t announced the Henderson terms publicly. We hadn’t announced them privately either, not outside a very small circle. Myself. Nyra. Two senior associates. The legal team who’d drafted the final language. The specifics in that email...delivery terms, the exact phrase I’d used in our internal notes...weren’t things a competitor s

I’ve been having Richard’s business watched for four months now. Not sabotage. I want to be clear with myself about that distinction, even if nobody else in my life would ever fully believe me on it. From a certain angle it probably looks exactly the same as the thing I’m claiming not to be doing. But there’s a difference between wanting a man to fail and needing to know exactly how much rope he’s got left before it snaps around someone I love. I’ve spent four months telling myself I’m doing the second thing, not the first. Some nights I almost believe it. Prakash’s cousin runs a small firm that does due diligence for private equity groups. Quiet work. The kind that doesn’t leave fingerprints. I called him the week after Nyra came back from her honeymoon. That’s still what I call it in my head, even though it makes something twist sick in my chest every time. Because it’s the truest name for what that trip was, even if neither of us has ever said the word out loud. I called him and

She said the vents were aggressive. I’ve worked in enough office buildings to know that’s not really a thing anyone says. Vents don’t do your hair like that. Not in a way that leaves it half out of its knot at the back like someone had a hand in it recently. I noticed it the second she came through the door, before she even opened her mouth to explain it away. Some old, quiet part of me...the part I’ve been trying not to listen to for weeks now...filed it away without saying anything. I didn’t push. That’s not really my style. I’ve watched my father do it my whole life. Corner a thing head-on the second he suspected it. All it ever got him was people who learned to lie better around him instead of people who told him the truth. I’ve always thought the smarter move is to just watch. Let people think they’ve gotten away with something. You learn more that way. We got a table at the café, ordered the usual. I watched her across it. The flush still sitting high in her cheeks. Her hands

It happened at Sunday dinner, which should have told me something the second Vanessa’s name came up before we’d even gotten to the main course. Nothing good ever seemed to announce itself gently in that house anymore. “Luca, darling.” Vanessa’s mother, a slim, silver-haired woman named Diane who I’d only met twice before, set down her wine glass with the particular precision of someone who’d rehearsed this moment in the car on the way over. “The foundation gala is in three weeks. Vanessa’s chairing the committee this year. We’d love for you to come.” “I’ll check my schedule,” Luca said. Even and careful. “He’ll be there,” my mother said, practically before he’d finished the sentence. Beaming at Diane like the two of them had already planned the whole seating chart. “Won’t you, sweetheart? It’s for a good cause. Children’s hospital wing, isn’t it?” “Pediatric oncology,” Diane confirmed. “Very close to our hearts. Vanessa’s put so much work into it.” Vanessa herself hadn’t said a w

NYRA’S POV I found Richard by the bar, deep in conversation with Marcus Webb. Both of them were leaning in close the way men do when the topic isn’t meant for anyone else’s ears. I didn’t try to interrupt. I didn’t have the stomach for another round of whatever had just happened between us, not with an audience, not tonight. I went looking for air instead. The balcony off the ballroom was mostly empty, just a couple of smokers near the far railing, the city spread out below in its usual indifferent glitter. I found a quiet corner away from them, wrapped my arms around myself against the cool night air, and let my face finally do whatever it wanted to do now that nobody important was watching. Stepbrother. He’d said it like a weapon, and it had landed like one. The worst part was I couldn’t even fully argue with the shape of what he’d meant by it, however cruel the delivery. I don’t know how long I stood there before I heard the door behind me. “There you are.” Luca’s voice, low,