Page 26 of Jealous Stepbrother (Jealous & Possessive #4)

FLORENTINE INFERNO

Asher

M y gate number is flashing final call, but I’m pacing the corner of San Francisco International like a man with no destination.

My phone is still cold in my hand, screen lit up with nothing but silence, and every frantic cell in my body is in free fall.

Scarlett isn’t answering.

Something is very fucking wrong.

By the time I board, I’ve already logged onto the penthouse feed.

Sure, it’s yet another invasion of her privacy, but fuck if I don’t do it anyway, because the alternatives of blind panic and deep dread are unbearable.

The video rewinds under my thumb.

There she is, leaving to meet Annette, coat slipping off one shoulder, my heart in her hands without even knowing it.

I frown because everything looks okay.

I fast-forward. Surprised when she returns less than an hour later. Did dinner not go well with her mom?

Her movements are jerky, frantic, like a bird trapped in a cage. Icy fury rushes to fill in the holes dread has left behind.

If they upset her. If my love is hurting because?—

I freeze when she drags a suitcase down the hallway.

What the fuck?

No. No no no no!

Where the hell is she going?

I swear under my breath and fumble for my phone, ignoring the looks I’m getting in the first-class cabin as I dial, redial, leave frantic message after frantic message until my voice is ragged and my heart feels like it’s been run over by an armored truck. Repeatedly .

“Scarlett, please, baby, pick up. Just…just tell me where you are. I’ll come get you, I’ll fix it, whatever it is, I’ll do anything, I swear. Don’t shut me out. Don’t—don’t make me live without you. I don’t know how.”

The jet engines roar in my ears, but it’s nothing compared to the roar in my chest. By the ninth voicemail I’m not even coherent, I’m begging.

By the eleventh, my throat is gone. Unfortunately for us both, by the seventeenth, I’m threatening that cave at the bottom of the world, to chain myself to her if that’s what it takes. Peppered with pleas to just call me back.

When she doesn’t, and when I’m a fiery whisper from kicking a hole in the airplane window because I’ve filled her voicemail box and can’t leave any more messages, I swallow my terror and dial Annette.

She answers on the third ring.

“Annette, what…please…” The words won’t form.

“Asher.” Her tone is gentle, a little resigned, but pitying in a way that makes me want to punch glass. “She found the email you deleted. I think there was something else, but well…a young woman is entitled to her secrets, I guess. But I think we both know you did this to yourself, Asher.”

I grit my teeth, press my palm into my eyes. “I know, I know, Christ, I know. But I don’t—I can’t let her go.”

“She needed space. You didn’t give her any.”

I want to roar that the only space she needs is me. I’ll be her fucking space! But I throttle back my deranged demand.

“Please, Annette. Help me. Tell me where she is, I’ll make it right. I’ll make it right if it kills me.”

There’s silence. Then another voice comes through. My father.

“Asher.” Stern, weighted. But not unkind. “You’ve lost control. Over her. Over yourself. And now you expect us to fix it?”

The bottom falls out of me.

I slump against the plane window, forehead on cool glass, my heart undecided whether to race or stop. “I can’t lose her, Dad. I can’t. She’s not just my work, or my muse, or some obsession. She’s—she’s everything. If I don’t have her, there’s nothing. You have to help me.”

There’s a pause long enough to gut me. “Dammit, son.” Then Victor exhales. “She’s gone to Florence.”

I end the call and stare down at my useless hands. I thought I was playing chess with her life, moving the pieces just so, securing my win. But all I’ve done is shove her off the board.

And for the first time in years, maybe in my whole damn life, I feel the full scale of my fuck-up.

Epic doesn’t even cover it.

Florence.

The word rings in my head like a cathedral bell, relentless, echoing, shaking everything loose inside me. My Scarlett. Across an ocean.

Out of my reach. Out of my control.

I press my forehead harder to the glass, my breath fogging the window. The lights of San Francisco bleed into streaks as the plane lifts, but I’m not really here. I’m already chasing her.

The panic sharpens into something else. Something I know better than anyone: resolve.

I open my laptop, my fingers flying faster than I can think.

A single message to my assistant takes care of my immediate professional stumbling block.

Cancel the meetings in California. Reschedule everything. Every collection fitting, every investor call. I speak to no one until further notice.

My entire world is stripped to the bone in minutes. Because none of it matters without her.

Then I pull up flights, scroll past the detours, the delays.

I need the fastest route. Rome tonight, Florence by morning.

I book the first direct flight ticket I find. Hell, if I have to sell another piece of my soul, I’ll be there.

Then with nothing but time on my hands until I land at JFK, I replay the camera feed, die every time I see her face tight with determination and pain. But with each replay, my resolve also calcifies.

Because it really is that simple.

Scarlett Rockwell is my heartbeat. My life’s blood. My oxygen.

There’s no me without her.

So she might think she’s free of me. Think she can breathe without me. And God, maybe she should. Maybe I deserve the empty bed, the silence, the punishment.

But I can’t do it. I can’t exist in a world where Scarlett doesn’t look at me, doesn’t fight me, doesn’t love me in her secret, forbidden way I intend to crack wide open and celebrate in the light.

I slam the laptop shut, chest heaving.

“I’m coming for you, my beautiful girl. And this time…I’ll get it right. I have to.”

Scarlett

The air in Florence is warmer than I expected.

Outside my nothing-fancy hotel on a narrow street, laundry sways above my window like flags of surrender. The sheets are crisp, the walls painted sun-bleached yellow.

It should feel like freedom, but instead, it feels like self-imposed exile.

I collapse onto the bed and stare at the ceiling fan turning lazily overhead. My phone lies on the nightstand, switched off.

I promised Mom I’d message when I landed, and I did. That’s all anyone needs to know for now. I can’t bear to hear the voicemails I know are waiting like a bomb and a comfort blanket.

His voice will undo me.

So I shower instead, scrub until my skin feels new, then dress in jeans and a loose blouse, hair pulled back into a ponytail.

Pretend I’m just another girl, halfway through an internship, playing tourist on the side and seeing the world.

Outside, Florence unfolds like a painting. Terracotta roofs, cobbled streets, the shadow of the Duomo rising impossibly grand against the sky.

I wander without direction and let the city swallow me whole. Order an espresso I barely sip. I write in my sketchbook, lines that don’t look like much until I realize I’m drawing his profile, his mouth.

His beautiful eyes.

I tear the page out with a fiercely stifled sob and crush it in my fist.

And I keep walking.

Across bridges, past statues, through narrow streets that open into sudden bursts of light. And the whole time my chest feels hollow.

Every laugh of strangers, every pair of lovers leaning close feels like a reminder of what I’ve left behind.

I tell myself I did the right thing.

That I need to decide who I am without Asher breathing down my neck, without his hands, his demands, his obsession that feels more like a wildfire than a shelter.

But when night falls and I return to the hotel, I’m shaking. I lie down on the stiff bed, curl into myself, and the silence roars.

I’ve run all the way across an ocean, and still, I feel him everywhere.

I’m cold without his wildfire.

Still, my phone stays dark.

It’s both torture and a relief when Monday rolls around.

Because this wasn’t how I envisioned this particular start of the week when I left House of M’s studio with my lover on Friday. But I’m up and moving instead of hugging my pillow and sobbing.

Casa Bellandi , the Florence design house, is tucked behind an ivy-clad archway, the kind of place that feels less like an office and more like a secret garden.

A receptionist ushers me through a corridor lined with sketches, bolts of silk spilling like waterfalls from racks.

I try to steady my breathing.

This is what I came for.

Not to run, but to stand on my own. To prove to myself—maybe to Asher too—that I’m more than someone who follows his rules.

The creative director, elegant in a way only Italians can be, studies my portfolio with a sharp, thoughtful gaze.

Her comments are precise, encouraging, but never indulgent. “You have an eye for detail. A hunger,” she says, tapping her finger against one of my sketches. “I can see it.”

Something loosens in my chest.

For a moment, I can almost forget the weight of Asher’s voice, his touch. I can imagine a future where I carve my own place in the world.

When I step back onto the street at the end of a surprisingly short day with zero angst or an overbearing mentor scowling at me, Florence is alive around me.

Vespas buzz, church bells toll.

I clutch the folder to my chest and breathe in the air as if it might keep me afloat.

But even then, a whisper claws at me.

He should be here. He should see this.

I miss my overbearing lover.

Desperately.