Page 41 of Heartless Stepbrother

LUNA

Dinnerarrivedincoursesthat glimmered like art pieces rather than food. Silver domes lifted to reveal butter-poached lobster resting on a bed of saffron risotto, its gold threads glistening under candlelight. Crushed pink peppercorns dotted the plate like tiny wounds. Crystal flutes shimmered with pale champagne, sweating delicately in the tropical heat.

Everyone around me sighed with pleasure, murmured approval, lifted forks with reverence.

But to me, the flavors were ash and smoke. Empty. Hollow.

Nothing could compete with the heat pressed relentlessly against my thigh under the pure white tablecloth, a heat that radiated from one unyielding column of muscle intent on reminding me he existed. That I was trapped beside him. That my body, traitorous and weak, felt every heartbeat of proximity.

I lifted my gaze from the untouched lobster, desperate to stay anchored to something that was not him. My mother sat directly across from me, laughing softly at something Marcus whispered into her ear. Her laugh was a sound I had forgotten. Light. Clean. Unburdened. It fluttered across the table like a small, brilliant bird freed from a cage.

Her face glowed under the string lights, no longer carved with lines of exhaustion. Her smile was gentle and shockingly young. She leaned into Marcus as if her body trusted his without question, and he mirrored her instinct with quiet devotion. One hand rested on the back of her chair, thumb stroking once, tender, certain.

He makes her happy. The thought pierced me, sharp as torn metal. He makes her so impossibly happy. I could never be the reason that ends.

My chest tightened with a fierce, protective ache.

Riley wanted to destroy this. All of it. My mother’s peace. Her second chance. Her softness. The fragile, luminous world she had built from the ruins of a decade spent alone.

And I would not let him.

Even if he followed through on every threat whispered against my skin. Even if he dragged me into a private hell crafted from my fears, my weaknesses, my terrible attraction to him. Even if he carved my sanity into thin, trembling ribbons.

I would stand in front of him as a silent wall he could break his fists against.

The thought strengthened me, a single iron bar inside a collapsing structure. I inhaled slowly, drawing in the perfume of warm sea air. My lungs stretched, painful but freeing, as if taking in my first breath in hours.

But Riley sensed peace like a predator sensed prey.

He shifted his weight, not overtly, just enough for his knee to grind into mine in a lazy, rhythmic pressure that felt like a private exchange no one could witness. A reminder. A claim. A warning.

I stiffened, breath catching.

“Enjoying the view?” he murmured, leaning close enough that his breath stirred the tendrils of hair at my temple. “You look dreamy, princess. Is it admiration… or strategy? Planning your escape route? Or perhaps planning theirs?”

His tone was a blade wrapped in velvet, slicing through my fragile calm.

“They look content,” I said, my voice deliberately flat. I aimed for numbness. Neutrality. Anything that did not reveal the way my pulse raced.

“Contentment is simply the quiet before something breaks,” he replied, flicking his gaze to my lips, then back to my eyes. The lights caught in his irises, two molten embers gleaming with cruel humor. “But I suppose some people like pretending stillness is safety.”

Before I could respond, he reached across the small space between our chairs and plucked the glossy cherry from my dessert plate. He held it between his fingers, studying it for a moment with lazy interest, then brought it to his mouth. His teeth sank into the fruit with slow, deliberate sensuality, a flash of white against red.

He never looked away from me.

“Share the sweetness, sister,” he said softly, as if confiding something intimate rather than taunting me. “You seem too tense to enjoy it.”

The word sister was an arrow dipped in poisoned honey. I heard the adults laugh at some joke Marcus made. I felt the string lights warming the air, the softness of the music. And none of it mattered. Riley’s voice drowned it all.

His taunting was relentless, a drip of molten wax across the skin of my composure. Each comment. Each lean of his body. Each slight brush of heat. He dismantled me with an expert’s touch, sculpting my unraveling with a cruelty almost artistic in its precision.

The band shifted key. The final chords of the jazz number swelled through the humid air. The lights dimmed, soft and romantic, casting the reception in a wash of amber.

Marcus rose and extended his hand to my mother. She took it without hesitation, and together they walked to the center of the dance floor for the first dance.

I watched them through the blur of candlelight and guests, surrounded by movement yet strangely alone. The space they left behind at the table felt colder, emptier, a hollow in the evening that seemed to echo inside me.

My mother’s white silk dress shimmered as she stepped into Marcus’s arms.