Page 2 of Jealous Stepbrother (Jealous & Possessive #4)

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

Scarlett

F our Years Later

The atrium downstairs is all steel and marble, full of people who look like theybelong. People with the kind of quiet confidence that comes from knowing they’ll never have to prove themselves twice.

I don’t have that kind of confidence, yet.

I’ve spent three years in college and working long shifts, skipping weekends, selling pieces of myself in the form of sketches to brands that didn’t deserve them. I’ve given up nights out, entire holidays, and more sleep than I can count just to make my portfolio bulletproof.

All because I made a choice everyone told me was reckless after I switched from a business degree to design. My bewildered mother called it impulsive. My stepfather called it a waste. I called it the only thing I’d ever wanted enough to fight for.

That fight hasn’t been easy. I’ve sacrificed too much to fail now.

This internship is the payoff. The door I’ve been pounding on since I was nineteen.

The receptionist at the desk looks up and smiles thinly.

“Scarlett Rockwell for House of M?” My voice shakes even saying the name.

Applying here had been a long shot, one I only agreed to because my professor wouldn’t let it go. I’d refused at first. House of M was in another league, and I wasn’t about to waste time chasing something I wasn’t good enough for.

“They’re in the middle of changing creative directors,” he’d told me. “They’re going in a new, edgy direction. I’m putting your name forward.”

I’d thought nothing of it. House of M was a sleek, shadowy label, more brand than person. I didn’t know who actually ran it, and I hadn’t cared to dig. Avoiding certain names, certain people, had been my survival strategy for years.

Then the email landed in my inbox.

Congratulations. You’ve been selected.

And here I am with my hair smoothed into a low braid and my lipstick understated but with enough pop ofcolorto boost my confidence, black blazer over a fitted top tucked into high-waisted trousers.

My minimal jewelry is polished but not flashy, the kind of armor you wear when you’re stepping into a room where you can’t afford to look small.

She nods briskly and slides a badge across the shiny surface. “Top floor. Private elevator. He’s expecting you.”

He?

Probably the department head. A senior designer.

I hesitate. “Is that where the orientation is happening?”

Her eyes flicker, amused and almost pitying. Then she taps the badge. “Turn right, double doors at the end.”

My stomach churns as I step into the sleek elevator and I barely have time to collect my thoughts or my breath before it comes to a smooth stop.

When the doors open, I step into a space that looks more like a luxury penthouse than an office. Black polished floors reflect every step I take, and the space is scattered with designer furniture and floor-to-ceiling views of Manhattan.

My palms are damp, my heartbeat just fast enough to feel in my throat. Nerves and adrenaline, all tangled together in a way that’s beginning to feel less than first-day nerves and more like…

I shake my head, keep my steps measured.

But something in me coils tight, a premonition clawing its way to the surface. I approach the glass double doors anyway.

I came all this way. I spent three months working on my portfolio. I beat out over two hundred applicants. I need this internship desperately.

Besides, I’ve known this kind of silence before.

The loaded kind. The kind that builds just before someone pulls the trigger.

I’m still attempting to locate my stolen breath when the doors swing silently open on electronic hinges.

And I see him.

Leaning back in a black leather chair at the head of an obsidian table, suit jacket unbuttoned, forearms inked and bare.

Four years vanish in a heartbeat.

I feel the heat, power, and fury of his body when he flipped over in that bed. Hear his voice… Don’t say I didn’twarn you, little girl.

I recall in surround sound the rip of silk and dreams and innocence. My pulse hammers. And of course, now that I know, I feel it.

The chill.

The weight.

The trap.

Not the building after all but the man.

He’s in the floors and the walls. The architecture itself, somehow. Brutal and unyielding. Stark lines and sharp edges with no warmth in sight.

He doesn’t look surprised.

“Scarlett,” he says slowly, like he’s tasting and savoring the name. “Welcome to my house.”

The shock that held me captive on seeing him multiplies a thousandfold. I blink. “Your… house?” My voice is a messy croak.

My head swings to the glass doors I just walked through. Frosted with one name etched clean across them.

ASHER MASTERSTON

Creative Director. Founder.

My stepbrother.

I reach back for the handle, heart hammering. My fingers hesitate an inch from the cool glass.

What the hell is he doing here?

No. Worse.

What the hell am I doing here if he’s the one behind this internship?

I look around, anywhere but at him. The conference room is all sharp angles and harsh light.

But inevitably, my eyes return to the lone figure, lounging at the head of a long obsidian table like he owns time itself, his palms now pressed to the shiny curves, his eyes…

blue, pale, icy, familiar in a way that burns.

I haven’t seen him in four years, but the sight of him still wrecks me—this man who ruined me on the night of my nineteenth birthday.

And the reason my life fell apart after.

He stands, straightening to his full, dangerous height. “You didn’t think you got here on your own, did you?”

The room shrinks around me and the blood drains from my face. “You set this up? You… you’re the mentor?”

“No, sweetheart.” He smirks. “I’m the program.”

My pulse roars in my ears. “You set this up.”

“I created this internship. Every designer reports to me.”

“I didn’t apply to work with you.”

He shrugs. “But you did apply to House of M, coaxed by a certain professor, am I right? That’s the thing about fate, Scarlett. She’s got a twisted sense of humor, especially when you’re lending a helping hand.”

I back toward the door, throat tight. “So… you knew I was coming.”

“I made sure of it.”

It’s not pride in his voice. It’s possession .

He prowls toward me now, slow and predatory, towering and tailored in a slate gray suit that clings like the filthiest sin and sex. His sleeves are rolled just enough to reveal the ink crawling up his forearm, sharp, geometric, symmetrical.

Like him.

“You don’t get to control my future,” I say, shaking.

“But I already do.” He stops in front of me, close enough that I feel the heat radiating off his body. “I pulled strings. Called in favors. You think they picked you on merit alone?”

“I had the best portfolio in my class.”

“And I made sure it landed in the right hands,” he replies. “Mine.”

Fury slices through the panic. “You manipulated the entire process?”

He smiles, slow and unapologetic. “You wanted a foot in the door. I gave you the whole building.”

My voice cracks. “Why?”

He doesn’t blink. “Because I want you here.”

No. No, no, no.

IrealizeI’ve spoken the words out loud.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he echoes with a rough rasp. “Of course I did.” That smile, oh so slow and lethal. “I wasn’t about to let you work for anyone else.”

The words slam into me like a physical hit. All my excitement curdles.

My stomach drops. “You—” My voice fractures. “You have no right.”

“I have every right,” he says, walking toward me. “I made the call. Pulled the strings. Put your name on the top of the pile.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That’s the point.” He’s close enough now that I can smell him—bergamot, cedar, and something darker I remember from a bed in Montauk. “You think you have to ask me for the things you want. You don’t. You just have to take them when I hand them to you.”

“You’re insane.”

He raises his hand, coasts a knuckle down my hot cheek. “I’m invested.”

I take a step back, my heels hitting the glass wall behind me. “You can’t just insert yourself into my life again after you disappeared for?—”

“Scarlett.” My name is a warning and a promise. “I didn’t insert myself. I’ve been here the whole time.”

My skin prickles. “You’ve been?—”

“Watching,” he finishes. “Making sure you didn’t waste what you have. Making sure you didn’t give it to anyone else.”

I can’t breathe. “You’re disgusting.”

He smiles faintly. “And yet, you’re here. Come in. Sit down. Let’s get this show on the road, shall we? Finally?”

That last word terrifies me, probably more than anything else that has unfolded in the last five minutes. I push past him and head for the elevator. “No.”

I turn on my heel and leave. My heels clack across polished stone, the echo of my rage and humiliation bouncing off the sterile walls.

This can’t be happening.

It can’t, it can’t, it can’t.

Outside, the Manhattan air hits like a slap.

I walk until my feet hurt, until the pulse in my ears dulls, until I can get my stepbrother’s scent and aura out of my consciousness long enough to think.

I’ll just… find another internship. Another path. I’ve done harder things.

Except, when I start calling around, no one’s hiring. Not even the ones who just this morning sent emails to remind me that I was still first on their yet-to-be-finalizedintern intake if I changed my mind.

By the third cool rejection, the truth starts to seep in like a slow poison.

By the fifth, I know .

Asher didn’t just open his trap door for me.

He slammed every other safe one shut.

I wander for two hours before I find myself in a grimy café near Canal Street, clutching a lukewarm coffee and staring blankly at my inbox.

Asher Masterston has struck with the precision and deadliness of a cobra once again.

Just like the last time he destroyed me.

The urge to jump in a rideshare and go home is strong. As is the urge to unpack this shock still reeling through me. My mom and I are close, despite the slight strain when I chose to change courses mid-sophomore year. But home means my stepfather, too.

And these days we’re not as tight.

Another thing Asher left me with is a stepdad who looks at me a little differently now, even though he doesn’t know. Can’t possibly know that his son ruined me in that one reckless night. I was keeping the House of M news under wraps until I actually signed on the dotted line.

Now…

I stare at the coffee until it goes cold.

The steam fades first, then the taste, until it’s nothing but bitter sludge in a paper cup.

I tell myself I’m not going back. But…the truth sits heavy in my chest. I don’t like unanswered questions.

Especially not ones wrapped in Asher’s voice and strung with invisible wire.

It’s been four years. Why now? Why is he doing this? Why me?

By the time I stand, my excuses are already lined up. I’m going back to demand answers. To see how far he’ll go. To take whatever advantage I can before I bolt.

That’s all. Definitely not because a part of me, the same reckless part that ignored every warning that night four years ago, needs to see if the fire—that potent fire—that simmers just below his surface is still white hot. Singeing everything in its path.

Including me.

That part? Well, it can fuck right off.

He looks entirely too smug, unsurprised and downright amused when I walk back into his conference room.

“Back so soon?”

I swallow my pride with bile. “I need this internship.”

He closes the distance between us in two strides. His fingers brush a strand of hair from my face. His eyes fall to my mouth.

“You’ll have it,” he says softly. “But on one condition.”

I hold my breath. “What?” Then I shake my head, remembering all the questions I planned to ask. “No, wait. First, tell me why you did all this… to get me here.”

He leans in, brushing his lips against my ear like a secret.

“You think what happened between us four years ago ended just because you ran screaming far too late after I warned you to stop?” An almost cruel smile quirks his lips.

“No, baby. I just hit the pause button. Let you run around, tire your sweet little ass out, then bring you right back when yourealizethat this…” his long fingers flicker between us, his eyes glinting with wicked, explicit delight, “is as inevitable as that hungry pulse in your tight little pussy that beats just for me.”

I slap him.

The crack echoes in the high-ceilinged room. My palm stings.

But he barely moves, doesn’t even flinch. He simply… smiles. Dark and dangerous. Ravenous and feral with it.

He toys with the same strand of my hair even as the imprint of my hand flares across his taut cheek.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he croons. “Welcome to the firm, baby sis.”

Oh God. I hate him.

And I hate how much I want him.