บททั้งหมดของ I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION : บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

The smell of burnt coffee and cheap, aged carpet hung heavy in Feldman’s bankruptcy office, thick enough to taste. Across from me, Feldman kept tossing around the word dissolution like he was delivering a terminal diagnosis. Which, in every way that mattered, he was. "Given the timeline," Feldman said, casually sliding a thick stack of papers across the dark wood, "and considering what the bank's compliance team has already red-flagged on those revised financials, I strongly urge filing before they drop this on the regulators themselves. Filing first lets us control the narrative as a good-faith collapse. Waiting lets them paint it as deliberate concealment." "Meaning what, exactly?" My voice sounded flat, hollowed out. "Meaning if you sign now, it remains a civil bankruptcy. Painful, bloody, but survivable." He locked eyes with me...steady, professional, stripped of any obvious judgment. I searched his face anyway, driven by that raw, paranoid instinct expecting every suit in the

NYRA'S POV I spent extra time covering the bruise along my jawline that morning. Three layers of heavy-coverage concealer instead of my usual two, setting powder pressed firmly into the skin, blending until the edge faded into my natural skin tone. Richard’s hand had connected harder this time than during any of our previous blowups, leaving a faint, sickly discoloration that no amount of cosmetic precision could fully erase if someone knew exactly where to look. And I knew Luca would be looking. Ever since the long-sleeve incident weeks ago, he looked at me with that watchful, agonizing concern. Over the last few days, I’d developed an automatic choreography of avoidance...angling my head away from overhead fluorescents, tilting my chin when he stepped into my space, tucking my hair forward. It was a rhythm I’d mastered without ever consciously choosing to build it. When I arrived at his office, he was already waiting for me. He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looki

NYRA’S POV George moved to a regular room by early afternoon, stable enough now that visitors could stay longer. The waiting room emptied into that hallway limbo of vending machines and hard plastic chairs outside his door. People went in for a few minutes and came back out looking a little less gray. My mother had gone home to shower and change. Richard had disappeared to call Feldman about bankruptcy paperwork that apparently could not wait, even for this. For a rare ten minutes it was just Luca and me sitting outside George’s room. The hallway was quiet except for distant monitors and the squeak of a nurse’s shoes somewhere down the corridor. “He looked better when I went in just now,” Luca said. Exhaustion was carved into every line of his face. “Color’s coming back. He’s talking more.” “That’s good.” I reached over and took his hand without thinking, some old instinct pushing past the caution I had been holding all morning. “You should eat something. You haven’t since you got

NYRA’S POV“Nyra.” My mother’s voice again, sharper this time, cutting through whatever haze the dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream had left behind. “I need you to actually answer me. Right now.”I stood there in the real hallway, my heart still slamming from a version of this moment that had not happened, that existed only behind my own eyes, and understood that I had maybe five seconds left to decide how much of it I was going to let become real.The tile under my feet was the same. The ice machine still hummed. George’s door was still closed. Richard was still here, phone in his hand, that blank look not yet turned into the speech I had just lived through in my head. Luca was still half a step in front of me, coiled, not moving. None of the dream had followed me out. Only the aftertaste of it. The word yes still sitting on my tongue. The image of Luca’s hands. The sound of my own voice pouring everything onto the floor in front of my mother and a man who could not even stand.I swallowed it

NYRA’S POV I sat in the driveway a long time, my hands still shaking on the wheel, and told myself I should just drive. But my phone was inside, charging on the kitchen counter, and some stubborn, practical part of me refused to leave without it. Refused to be the kind of woman who ran off into the night with no way to call anyone if something went wrong. I went back in. He was still in the living room. He had not moved much from where I left him. His head turned fast at the sound of the lock. Something in his face already re-ignited the second he saw me standing there again. “I thought I told you to go.” “I forgot my phone. I’m not staying.” I kept my voice even, moving quickly toward the kitchen. “Of course.” He followed me, close behind, his voice climbing already. “Can’t even manage a clean exit. Typical.” “Richard, I’m just getting my phone.” “Is that what you’re getting? Or are you looking for an excuse to keep managing me a little longer?” I found the phone, unplugged