บททั้งหมดของ I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION : บทที่ 61 - บทที่ 70

RICHARD’S POV The email came in at 2:17 in the afternoon, buried under three other messages that looked more urgent until I opened it and the whole room went quiet. Subject line plain as anything. Credit facility review. Immediate action required. I read it twice, then a third time slower, like the words might rearrange themselves into something I could live with if I gave them enough time, but they did not. The bank had flagged inconsistencies in the statements submitted with the additional line of credit, revenue figures that did not match prior filings, receivables that could not be verified, and a temporary freeze on the facility pending a formal review. No new draws. Existing access locked. Contact your relationship manager within twenty-four hours. I sat at my desk and stared at the screen until the letters started to blur. Four weeks. That was all it had taken, four weeks from Marcus’s office and his pen and his banker friend on the video call with that practiced unbothered

The next morning, I drove over to my mother’s place. I hadn’t planned on going, but after spending the entire night lying stiff as a board next to a husband who was sleeping like a baby...completely unfazed by everything...I just needed to be somewhere that felt safe. Even if I couldn't fully explain why. When I walked in, my mom was in the middle of clearing out the hall closet. Boxes were piled high all along the hallway, part of some ambitious spring-cleaning project she’d decided to start a whole season early. "Perfect timing," she said, leaning over to kiss my cheek. She didn't notice how carefully I was holding my left arm against my ribs, or how low I had pulled the sleeve of my cardigan despite the warm morning air. "I found a box of your old stuff from before you went abroad. I meant to give it to you years ago, but it just got buried." She pointed to a smaller cardboard box sitting off to the side. My name was written on the edge in handwriting that wasn't mine or my mom'

He was already drinking when I got home from my aunt Carol’s. Not the slow, quiet kind from the last few months. The ugly kind. The bottle sat on the glass coffee table without a cup. The television flickered on mute, throwing cold blue light across his face. I set my keys down quietly. The letter was still in my bag. After aunt Carol’s place, I just sat in the car until my hands stopped shaking. I came home because I didn’t trust myself to walk into another house carrying that much heat. “You’re late,” Richard said. He didn’t look up. “I was at my mom’s.” “Sure.” He took another pull straight from the bottle. “Your mom, your office, your stepbrother. Same story, different door.” I stayed by the entryway. The air in the room felt thick and hot. “Richard, I’m not doing this tonight.” “You don’t want to do a lot of things lately.” He stood up fast, knocking his knee against the table. Whiskey sloshed over his hand. He didn’t bother wiping it off. “You don’t want to talk about th

The bruise on my arm had faded to a sickly yellow-green by the week Marcus's real hand in everything came completely undone. I was still wearing long sleeves regardless. It was some old, ugly habit already forming that I hadn't fully examined yet, even in eighty-degree heat, even when Clara asked, twice, if I was roasting in the office. Luca noticed on a Tuesday. We were bent over the Castellan revisions together at his desk. The room was quiet, thick with the scent of his cologne and the heavy afternoon heat rolling off the glass windows. He reached across to point at a clause, his bare hand brushing my forearm right through the fabric of my blazer. I flinched. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't enough that anyone else in the room would have caught it, but he did. His hand froze mid-air. His eyes flicked up to my face fast, dark and suddenly sharp. "Nyra." "It's nothing. I'm just sore from the gym." The lie came out smooth...too smooth. It was the kind of practiced smoothness I'd be

The kitchen was dead silent, which should’ve been my red alert right out of the gate. Richard hadn't been back by six in weeks. Not since the bank dropped the hammer. Not since the night he shoved me, hit me, and then slept in the guest room like a few feet of hallway could magically wipe the slate clean. No TV buzzing. No quarter-empty bottle of bourbon sitting on the counter this time. Just him standing dead-center in the kitchen with his coat still zipped and his keys clutched so tight his knuckles were white. He looked like a man who’d walked through his own front door and completely forgot how to exist. "You're early," I offered, keeping my voice level. "I went to see Marcus." The name hit the room like a drop in room temperature. I set my bag on a chair, keeping the wide granite island firmly between us without even realizing my body was doing it. My cheek still bore that faint, sickly yellow shadow under three layers of heavy concealer. I’d spent days carefully tilting my