Alle Kapitel von My Stepbrothers Are Triplets : Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 10

By the end of her first week, Mathilde had a map—and a countdown.She gave herself sixty days. Sixty days to get through the summer, keep her mother happy, and get out of the Ashford estate without becoming a permanent fixture in its gilded cage. It was a manageable plan. Mathilde liked manageable things. She had spent her whole life turning chaos into something she could hold: first her mother's finances, then her own future. Three strange men who all wore the same face were just another equation to solve.The map was simple. Caspian left before seven and returned after nine, moving through the house like a man auditing it. Theo was everywhere and nowhere, always mid-errand. James, she mostly didn't see at all. He had a study on the third floor that Élise had airily called "James's darkroom, don't worry about it," and whatever happened behind that door kept him out of dinner more nights than not.It was a manageable map. Until Tuesday.She'd gone looking for her mother's misplaced re

She told herself she wasn't looking for anything. She was looking for a spare charger—which was true—and the wing at the end of the east corridor was the only part of Château Verrine she hadn't been shown—which was also true. The fact that both things could be true and still add up to something she'd later have to call snooping was a piece of math she chose not to do until it was too late to matter.The door wasn't locked. That, more than anything, should have warned her. A house like this locked everything that mattered, and a door left open was either an accident or a message.It had been a nursery once, from the height of the old wallpaper and the shape of the crown molding. What was there instead was a single low couch, worn soft in a way nothing else in this house was allowed to be worn, and against the far wall, three armchairs set close enough together that their arms nearly touched.And photographs. Dozens of them pinned across a corkboard. Three boys asleep in a single bed to

The silence after Julien left was the kind that follows a gunshot—ringing, disbelieving, and full of the sense that something irreversible had just happened.Mathilde stood in the center of the salon, her phone still in her hand, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat. She had just threatened Julien Ashford. She had just won. And yet, as she looked at the three brothers staring at her, she didn't feel triumphant. She felt like someone who had just pulled a thread and watched the whole tapestry start to unravel."You recorded him," Caspian said again, as if saying it a third time might make it make sense. He was still sitting on the couch, his back rigid, his eyes fixed on her like she was a variable he hadn't accounted for. "You actually recorded him.""I told you," Mathilde said, pocketing her phone. "I'm not a variable. I'm not a problem. I'm the one asking the questions now."Theo let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-something else. "That was the most ter

Marchetti lowered the gun, but Caspian didn't lower the shotgun. The two men stood facing each other across the study, the fire crackling low in the grate, the air thick with the smell of smoke and fear. "Start talking," Caspian repeated. "And don't leave anything out." Marchetti smiled. It was a thin, humorless expression, the smile of a man who had been waiting a long time for this moment. "You think you've won? You think holding a gun on me changes anything?" "I think it changes the next five minutes," Caspian said. "Whether you walk out of this room or get carried out is entirely up to you." "Always the negotiator." Marchetti shook his head. "Your father was right about you. You think you can control everything. You think you can make deals with the devil and come out clean. But you can't. Not this time." "Then tell me why," Caspian said. "Tell me why you've been spying on us

The drive to Paris took four hours. Mathilde sat in the back seat of Caspian's black sedan, her phone clutched in her hand, her heart hammering against her ribs. James drove in silence, his eyes fixed on the road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Caspian sat beside her, his hand resting on her knee, a steady, grounding presence. Theo had stayed behind with Élise, promising to meet them at the lawyer's office. No one spoke. There was nothing left to say. The city rose around them as dawn broke over the rooftops—grey and gold and indifferent. Mathilde had never been to Paris. She had dreamed of it once, as a girl, imagining herself walking along the Seine with a book under her arm, anonymous and free. Now she was here for a different reason. Now she was here to burn a man's life to the ground. The lawyer's office was in the Eighth Arrondissement, on a narrow street lined with gall