CLAIMED BY MY STEPBROTHER

Lila

The laptop arrived at eleven-forty, carried in by the same man from the day before. He set it on the island without a word, glanced once at Damien, then left.

I opened it.

Clean machine. Design suite already installed. No browser visible at first glance. I created a new folder, pulled up the architecture brief I had been working on before the wake, and forced myself to focus on lines and measurements. Real work. The kind that required my full attention. For almost two hours I managed it. My neck ached. The light outside shifted from morning to the harder white of midday.

When I finally sat back, Damien was still in the living area, phone in hand, speaking in a low voice I couldn’t fully catch. He ended the call when he noticed I had stopped typing.

“You have access,” he said. “Use it.”

“It’s filtered.”

“Yes.”

I turned the screen toward him slightly. “I need reference images. Client files from my cloud.”

“Submit the list. I’ll decide.”

Of course he would.

I went back to the screen and worked in silence for another stretch. Every so often I felt his attention settle on me, not constant, but regular enough that my shoulders never fully dropped. The mark on my neck had darkened overnight. I had checked it in the bathroom mirror. Purple at the edges. Impossible to hide in anything with a lower neckline.

I hated that I kept touching it.

At some point he set a plate near my elbow. Food. I hadn’t asked for it. I ate a few bites because my body needed it, not because I thanked him.

“Konstantin’s people made contact again this morning,” he said eventually, still looking at his phone.

My fingers paused on the track pad.

“What did they want?”

“A meeting. Formal.” He locked the screen and set the phone down. “I declined.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.” His eyes lifted to mine. “They don’t get to request anything where you’re concerned.”

The quiet in his voice made the air feel heavier. I looked back at the screen so he wouldn’t see the reaction move through me, the quick tightening low in my stomach, the way my pulse jumped.

I worked until the light started to change again. When I finally closed the design suite, my eyes burned. I stood and stretched, feeling the residual ache between my thighs with every shift of muscle. Damien watched the movement without pretending not to.

“I want to speak to Sophia,” I said.

“No.”

“She’s my friend. She thinks I’ve been taken.”

“She thinks correctly.”

I stared at him. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m ensuring you stay alive.” He pushed off the counter and walked closer. Not touching distance yet. Close enough that I had to tilt my chin to hold his gaze. “There’s a difference.”

“It doesn’t feel like one.”

“It will.”

The certainty in the two words landed harder than a threat. My mouth went dry. I could smell the faint scent of his skin from here. The same scent that still clung to the sheets I had woken up in.

I stepped back first.

“I’m going to shower,” I said.

He didn’t stop me.

In the bathroom I locked the door even though I knew the lock was meaningless. I stripped and stood under hot water until my skin turned pink. The mark on my neck looked darker when wet. I pressed my fingers to it and felt a pulse of heat that had nothing to do with the water. My body still remembered the night in fragments…the glass, his mouth, the way he had held me open, the exact moment I stopped fighting the pleasure. I shut the water off harder than necessary.

When I came out in clean clothes from the wardrobe, Damien was on a call again. His voice was low and cold. I caught only pieces.

“…tell him the window closed the moment I walked into that hall.”

“…no, she stays where she is.”

“…if they push, I stop being polite.”

He ended the call and looked at me. Whatever he saw on my face made the corner of his mouth shift slightly.

“You’re listening.”

“You’re not exactly hiding it.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” He set the phone down. “Konstantin is patient, but he’s not endless. The longer you stay here, the more expensive this becomes for him. That’s intentional.”

I crossed my arms. “And what happens when he decides the expense is worth it?”

Damien’s eyes stayed on mine. There was no reassurance in them. Only calculation and something darker underneath.

“Then I remind him why he waited eleven years instead of taking you the first time he had the chance.”

The way he said it quietly, almost offhand, made the hairs on my arms rise. This was not the man who had gone to his knees for me the night before. This was the Don who had walked into a wake and taken what he wanted while armed men stood still.

I hated that the distinction sent a low current of heat through me.

I walked to the window again because it was the only place in the room that felt like it still belonged to the outside world. Behind me I heard him move. When he spoke again he was closer.

“You’re testing the edges,” he said. “The laptop. The questions. The way you keep touching that mark when you think I’m not looking.”

My hand dropped from my neck before I could stop it.

“I’m allowed to think.”

“You’re allowed to do a lot of things.” His voice dropped. “Running is not one of them. Not yet.”

I turned. He was close enough now that I had to look up. The air between us felt charged again, the same dangerous charge from the car, from the glass, from every moment he decided to close the distance.

“You’re very sure of yourself,” I said.

“I’ve had seven years to become sure.”

My pulse was too loud. I could feel the residual tenderness between my legs with every shift of my weight. He noticed. Of course he noticed. His gaze flicked down for half a second, then returned to my face.

“Laptop stays here,” he said. “You work. You eat. You sleep in that room. When I’m ready, you’ll get more answers. Until then, stop looking for exits you won’t reach.”

He left the living area without waiting for a reply. The bedroom door I had used earlier closed softly down the hall.

I stood at the glass with my arms wrapped around myself and the mark on my neck throbbing in time with my pulse.

Outside, the city kept moving.

Inside, every route still ran through him.

I went back to the laptop, opened a blank document, and began typing notes in the smallest font I could manage…names, observations, the exact wording he had used about Konstantin, the fact that Sophia and Marcus had been redirected rather than blocked completely.

I was still mapping.

And for the first time since the wake, the mapping felt less like desperation and more like the early stages of a plan I wasn’t ready to name yet.

I saved the file under a boring client title and closed the laptop.

Then I sat in the quiet penthouse, feeling the ache he had left in my body and the colder weight of the things he still hadn’t told me, and wondered how long a person could live inside a cage before she started calling it something else.