Page 2 of Heartless Stepbrother

She wouldn’t just be another outsider to drive away.

She would be the one I used to prove, once again, that this life was mine. That my father and I were unbreakable. That everything, every inch, every breath, every name, fell under my control.

I exhaled smoke into the cold air, watching it disappear. The city looked the same as it always did. But something was coming. A shift. A disruption.

A girl with a name like moonlight.

She didn’t belong here.

And she would learn that soon enough.

Either by choice, or by force.

Because in the end, everything in my world bent to me.

And Luna Carter would be no different.

She just didn’t know it yet.

CHAPTER TWO

LUNA

Stop the wedding.

You’re gonna regret it if you don’t.

The words glared at me from the screen like open wounds, sharp black against white. Even though I had read them before, the letters still felt cold, alive somehow, as if they carried a pulse of their own.

The plane vibrated softly beneath me, a low, endless hum that blurred thought into sound. The seatbelt cut lightly across my lap. The recycled air smelled faintly of citrus and metal, too clean, too unyielding.

I had been staring at that same message for the last ten minutes.

It wasn’t the only one.

I swiped upward, my thumb trembling just slightly.

You still have time to stop it.

Don’t let your mother marry him.

If you go through with this, you’ll pay the price.

Weeks of them. Each one more insistent. More desperate. Some sent in the middle of the night. All from a number that vanished the moment the message arrived, only to reappear with the next one.

I hadn’t told anyone. Not my parents, not my friends, not even the police. The messages hadn’t been threatening exactly, at least not at first. But there was something about them that sank under my skin. They weren’t the usual spam or mistake. They knew things. Details no stranger should have known.

Like where I went to school.

What perfume I wore.

The exact date and time of the flight I was on now.

My stomach twisted. I pressed the lock button and turned the screen facedown on my lap, but the words still burned behind my eyelids.

Stop the wedding.

I forced my eyes away from my phone, desperate for distraction.