All Chapters of I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION : Chapter 81 - Chapter 86

NYRA’S POV I stood in front of the bathroom mirror at six in the morning with a face that looked nothing like the one I needed to walk into that office wearing. The bruise along my cheekbone had bloomed overnight into something darker than I expected. Purple shading into a sick yellow-green at the edges. My wrist, when I turned it carefully under the light, showed a matching set of finger-shaped marks I would have to keep covered for at least another week. I stood there a long time just looking at myself. At the wreckage of a face that still had to go sit across a desk from Luca in four hours and give a convincing performance of nothing being wrong. I had slept maybe two hours, curled on the guest bed with the door locked. Richard’s apologies had gone quiet sometime after midnight, when he finally gave up and went to bed himself. I had not spoken to him again. I waited until I heard his breathing even out through the wall, then crept to my own room to shower, moving carefully, cata

RICHARD’S POVShe didn’t come home.I sat up most of the night on the couch, phone in my hand, watching the screen for a text that never came, rehearsing apologies I wasn’t sure I’d even get the chance to give. By two in the morning I’d convinced myself something had happened to her. That maybe I’d actually done something worse than I remembered doing. The whole night was already blurring at the edges in that particular way where shame starts editing memory before you’ve even finished living it.By four, I knew where she was. I didn’t need her to tell me. There was only one place she’d go.The irony sat in my mouth like metal. I had spent months building a case against her in my head. Late nights. Soft answers. His name too easy on her tongue. And the whole time I had my own nights I never accounted for. A woman from the industry circuit. Hotel bars after conferences. A number saved under a supplier’s name. I had told myself it didn’t count the same way. That men under pressure did wh

NYRA’S POV Clara found me in the break room on a Monday, and I knew immediately from the set of her shoulders that this was not going to be the gentle, careful version of the conversation we had had weeks ago. “Sit down a second,” she said, closing the door behind her. Something in her voice left no real room to say no. I sat. She pulled the other chair around to face me directly instead of standing at a comfortable distance the way she had before, and studied my face a long moment. Her expression was unreadable in a way that made my stomach drop. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t see it anymore,” she said finally. “The sick days. The sleeves. The way you’ve started flinching when someone reaches past you too fast, even just to grab a stapler. I gave you weeks, Nyra. I told you I wouldn’t push, and I meant that, and I’ve kept my word. But I watched you wince this morning putting your bag on your own shoulder, and I’m done pretending I don’t understand exactly what that means.” “C