My CEO Brother Wants Me
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
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Chapter 4
LUCIEN
I watched her run upstairs.
The sound of her steps faded quickly, but the tension she left behind stayed in the room.
My mother exhaled slowly.
"Lucien, why did you have to do that like that?"
I didn't answer.
She turned toward me. "She just got back. It's too soon."
I folded my napkin neatly beside my plate before responding.
"I've waited long enough."
My father leaned back in his chair, watching me the way he always did when he was deciding whether to argue or not.
Seraphina shook her head. "I know you have," she said. "But you could have waited a little longer. Ava is only twenty two."
I looked at her, then responded, "That means she's old enough."
She pressed her lips together, clearly unhappy with that answer.
Across the table, my father sighed.
"And how exactly do you plan to get her to agree?" he asked. "You saw how she ran upstairs."
I leaned back in my chair.
"She'll be fine."
Seraphina frowned. "Lucien."
"She's overwhelmed," I continued, cutting her off without raising my voice. "That's expected."
"Expected," My father repeated.
I met his gaze evenly. "She was always going to react like this."
"Lucien," she said, "you can't decide her life for her."
I held her gaze for a moment before answering.
"I'm not deciding it for her."
Both of them looked unconvinced.
Then I added, calmly, "She is already mine."
My mother parted her mouth in disbelief, which I didn't understand because this was no news to them.
"She just doesn't know it yet," I finished.
The words didn't feel dramatic to me, they felt factual. I had waited longer than anyone realized. I watched her grow, protected her from a distance, made sure nothing and no one claimed her before I did.
I pushed my chair back and stood.
"Where are you going?" my mother asked.
"Upstairs."
She looked alarmed. "Lucien, don't push her tonight."
I paused at the staircase.
"I'm not pushing," I said. "I'm reminding her."
I walked out before either of them could stop me.
The door to her room was slightly open when I got there.
I didn't knock. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
She was standing by the window, looking out, deeply in thoughts.
She didn't turn immediately, but she spoke, "You're supposed to knock."
Her voice sounded calm, but I could hear the tension underneath it.
"I didn't used to knock," I replied.
She turned then.
"That was when I was still a child."
I should have answered her.
I should have said something immediate but I couldn't because seeing her like this, alone, relaxed and unaware of how closely I was looking, undid something I had kept buried for years.
She was ethereal in a way that made you look twice without meaning to.
Her face had matured. She had a clear, flawless skin. Her full lips were pressed in irritation.
And her body...
My gaze dropped before I could stop it.
She had a small waist, and a natural curve to her shape that the gown she wore didn't hide. She had grown fully into a woman.
I dragged my eyes back to her face before I lost control completely.
"What was that downstairs?" she asked.
There it was, the anger and confusion.
I walked closer.
She didn't move, but I could see the way her shoulders tensed as the distance between us closed.
"I meant what I said," I told her.
She let out a short laugh. "You can't be serious."
"I am."
Her eyes searched my face like she was trying to find the joke hidden somewhere.
"You're talking about marriage like it's a business arrangement," she said. "Like you get to decide it on your own."
I stopped a step away from her.
"I've already decided."
Her expression hardened immediately. "You don't get to decide my life for me."
"I'm not deciding it for you," I said calmly.
"Then what do you call what you did downstairs?" she shot back. "You announced it like it was already happening."
"It is."
She stared at me like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"You're insane," she muttered.
I didn't react.
She took a breath, trying to calm herself.
"You're my brother, Lucien."
"No."
The word came easily, without hesitation.
"I never acknowledged you as my sister. I never called you that."
She laughed, shaking her head.
"Is that why you were so distant too?" she asked. "Why you barely spoke to me growing up?"
I looked away for a second.
Her voice rose. "Is that why you didn't even care when I left?" she went on. "Why you didn't call once?"
She paused, then corrected herself.
"Actually... not when I left. When you told our parents to send me away."
I just kept staring, trying hard to focus on what she was saying.
"You think I didn't know?" she said. "You think I didn't realize it was you?"
I spoke then, calmly. "They're my parents."
She frowned, confused by the correction.
"If anything," I continued, "they'll be your parents-in-law."
She stared at me, stunned.
I stepped closer again, slow enough that she could step back if she wanted to but she didn't.
"You're wrong about the rest," I added.
"About what?" she asked.
"I cared when you left."
She shook her head. "You didn't act like it."
"I couldn't afford to."
Her brows pulled together.
"Sending you away was the only way to stay in control," I said.
"Control of what?" she asked.
"Of myself."
"Lucien, this is madness." She gasped, shaking her head.
"I waited, Ava. I waited for you to grow up."
Her eyes widened slightly.
"I didn't touch you," I continued. "I didn't cross boundaries. I didn't let myself look at you the way I do now."
Her chest heaved.
"You think this is normal?" she asked.
"No," I said honestly.
"Then why-"
"Because you were always mine." I answered.
She shook her head immediately. "No, don't say that."
"You were," I repeated. "You just didn't know it yet."
"That's not love," she said, her voice was shaking. "That's obsession."
I held her gaze. "Yes."
She went quiet, opening her mouth and closing it.
"I don't deny that," I continued. "But obsession doesn't mean I didn't wait for my feelings to be appropriate."
She stared at me like she didn't know whether to be angry or afraid.
"You're still free to say no," I said.
Her lips parted again.
"But you won't," I added.
"Stop saying that like you know me," she snapped.
"I do know you."
"You don't," she argued. "You don't know anything about me anymore."
I watched her for a moment, then said, "I know enough."
Her chest rose and fell faster now.
I could feel the pull between us tightening, not just from me, but from her confusion, her anger, her inability to step away, and that was the moment my control almost slipped again.
Standing this close, close enough to see the faint flush on her skin and way her lips parted when she breathed...
My hand twitched at my side.
Then came the instinct to reach for her, to kiss her senseless and hold her still long enough to make her listen without running, but I stopped myself.
Restraint had carried me this far, I wouldn't break it now.
"You can take time," I said finally.
She looked wary.
"I've already waited years," I continued. "I can wait a little longer."
I stepped back, giving her space for the first time since entering the room. But before I turned to leave, I added one last thing.
"You can deny it all you want, Ava."
She looked at me, guarded.
"But you've always belonged to me, and you always will."
I left the room before she could answer.
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8.4
Carissa's son was dying in the ICU, and the bone marrow match had just failed.
The billionaire father, Guilford Gates, cornered her with a cruel ultimatum: naturally conceive a "savior sibling" to save their son. But what shocked Carissa more was his family's sudden accusation that she had heartlessly sold her baby to them three years ago.
"You sold your own flesh and blood to us for five million dollars, so your body belongs to the Gates family."
She was dragged into their gilded estate, treated like a filthy, rented womb. Guilford's new fiancée mocked her, the matriarch humiliated her, and Guilford looked at her with pure disgust. When she desperately tried to feed her sick son and accidentally made him vomit, Guilford violently shoved her away and banned her from the room.
Carissa was devastated and entirely confused. She had never seen a single cent of that five million. Driven by a desperate need for the truth, she investigated and uncovered a horrifying reality: her own father and stepmother had secretly trafficked her baby to the billionaire behind her back, leaving her to bear the ultimate blame.
Looking at the bank transfer record bought with her son's life, the last shred of Carissa's vulnerability died.
She signed the conception contract without asking for a single penny. She was going to use the Gates family's immense power to destroy the blood relatives who sold her, and she would survive this hell to take back her son.
8.4
Everly spent four years playing the perfect, accommodating wife to Carson Moss, swallowing every grievance just to secure medical treatments for their sick daughter.
But at a high-society banquet she exhausted herself organizing, Carson's pregnant mistress crashed the party.
The woman shoved an ultrasound of Carson's "real heir" directly into Everly's frail grandfather's face.
The shock triggered a massive heart attack.
Carson refused to use his private helicopter to save the dying old man, choosing to protect his mistress and his company's IPO instead. Her grandfather died on the hospital table.
Instead of remorse, her mother-in-law demanded Everly publicly cover up the murder.
"You will do exactly as I say, or I will freeze every single cent of the medical trust fund paying for your crippled daughter's treatments."
When a battered Everly returned to the estate, she discovered her three-year-old daughter covered in dark bruises and pinch marks. Her in-laws were deliberately torturing her disabled child.
Everly couldn't comprehend how a family could be so utterly heartless. Her only family was murdered, her child was abused, and her husband threw a five-million-dollar check at her face as hush money.
They thought she would just break and quietly disappear.
But when a terrifyingly powerful billionaire unexpectedly blocked Carson's security team from locking her up, Everly finally saw her window.
She grabbed her sleeping daughter and ran out into the freezing storm, making a blood-bound vow to make the entire Moss family bleed.
7.1
For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big.
On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe."
Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero."
Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends.
"She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy."
Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder.
I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number.
"Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."
7.8
Andrea was trapped in a suffocating marriage with billionaire Gregory Morse, forced to live as the pathetic substitute for his dead fiancée.
When armed intruders broke into their estate in the dead of night, she called her husband in pure terror.
"Stop playing these cheap, attention-seeking games," Gregory sneered with disgust, and hung up the phone.
She barely escaped with her life, but the cruelty only escalated. At the family mansion, his dead fiancée's sister deliberately scalded Andrea's hand with boiling tea. Instead of defending his wife, Gregory publicly humiliated her, ordering her to clean up the mess while calling her a stray dog.
That night, hiding in the dark wine cellar, Andrea overheard a chilling confession.
Gregory admitted to his brother that he knew Andrea was completely innocent of the car crash that killed his fiancée. He knew she had been framed.
Why did he marry her? Just to use her as a psychological punching bag to vent his twisted grief. He watched her suffer every single day, treating her like disposable trash, while violently threatening anyone who showed her an ounce of kindness.
He thought she was just a useless, helpless shadow who would quietly endure his torment forever.
He had no idea that behind her submissive facade, she was secretly Madame Lan, the apex predator of the global fashion world. And now, she was ready to burn his empire to the ground.
8.9
For seven years, I hid my MIT Ph.D. and my identity as a top haute couture designer to be the perfect, obedient wife to billionaire Cornelius Lambert.
But on our anniversary, while I waited at home with a cold dinner, I found him at a Michelin restaurant with his childhood sweetheart, Halle.
My seven-year-old son sat between them, laughing loudly.
"Mom is too boring. I wish Aunt Halle was my real mom."
Cornelius didn't defend me. He just smiled and affectionately ruffled the boy's hair.
When I finally packed my bags and left, I accidentally triggered an old AI robot prototype Cornelius had given me years ago.
A hidden recording played his voice from the very night he proposed.
"Why marry her? Because she's easy to control. Halle doesn't want to settle down yet, so Cassidy is just a perfect, temporary shield."
Later, when I caught them being intimate in a dark parking garage and snapped a photo, Cornelius watched with cold, dead eyes as his massive bodyguard shoved me against a concrete pillar.
My arm was torn open, blood dripping onto the floor, as they forced me to delete the evidence of his affair.
For seven years, I filed down every sharp edge of my brilliance for a man who saw me as nothing but a pathetic, disposable placeholder.
My heart turned to absolute ice. He thought I was just a weak, powerless housewife.
But he forgot who he was dealing with.
As his luxury car drove away, I pulled up the hidden command terminal on my phone and recovered the encrypted cloud backup of the photos.
I looked at my lawyer with a bleeding arm and a cold smile.
"Let's go. Now, we have a weapon."
7.9
For five years, April Gamble loved Julian Travis with everything she had, trusting him completely.
But on a stormy night, he casually tossed a liquidation agreement at her feet, single-handedly destroying her grandfather's company.
He coldly admitted he only dated her to steal Vance Group's internal financial data.
"You were convenient," Julian said, swirling his whiskey without a shred of guilt.
Before April could even process the brutal betrayal, a breaking news alert lit up her phone.
She watched in absolute horror as her grandfather jumped from the ledge of the Vance Tower on live television.
Julian looked at her writhing, screaming form with utter boredom and simply ordered his bodyguard to throw her out.
Blinded by grief and tears, April sped into the torrential rain, only to be completely crushed by a hydroplaning transport truck at an intersection.
As the shattered glass tore into her skin and the metal crushed her ribs, she died with a hatred so pure it made her teeth ache.
Why did five years of devotion mean absolutely nothing to him? Why did her family have to die just to feed his ruthless greed?
When she opened her eyes again, the harsh hospital lights blinded her, but the familiar burn scar on her arm was gone.
She wasn't the betrayed financial analyst April Gamble anymore.
She had woken up in the body of Altagracia Blanchard, the most notorious, obscenely wealthy heiress in New York.
Julian had taken everything from her, but now, armed with a billionaire's empire, she was going to bury him.