The Forbidden Mark Of My Stepbrother

The taxi dropped Kelsie at the main gate of the estate. She was exhausted. Her elbow was bleeding through her new suit jacket, and her head was pounding.

As she tried to punch in the pedestrian code, a red convertible screeched to a halt, blocking the driveway. Sloane.

Sloane rolled down the window. "Look at you. A stray dog trying to get back into the palace."

"Move the car, Sloane," Kelsie said, her patience snapping.

"Make me," Sloane smirked.

"You are a spoiled, vicious brat," Kelsie shouted, the anger finally boiling over. "You have never worked a day in your life, and you treat people like garbage because you're miserable!"

"Excuse me?" Sloane gasped.

Security guards stepped out of the booth, looking uncomfortable. Just then, the black Maybach pulled up behind Sloane's car.

Cornelius stepped out. He looked at the scene: Sloane in her car, Kelsie disheveled and yelling, the guards watching. His face darkened.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"She called me a bitch!" Sloane lied instantly, putting on a tearful face. "She was screaming at me because I asked about Dad!"

Kelsie looked at Cornelius, desperate. Please, she thought. Just this once, see me.

Cornelius looked at the guards, then at Sloane, and finally at Kelsie. His eyes were cold, calculating the risk to the family image.

"Kelsie," he said, his voice low and dangerous. He didn't need to say more. With a nearly imperceptible nod, he signaled one of the guards, who took a half-step toward her. The message was clear: comply.

He was choosing order. He was choosing the hierarchy. He was putting her in her place.

Kelsie bit her lip so hard she tasted copper. She looked him dead in the eye.

"No."

Cornelius blinked, surprised by her defiance.

"I am done apologizing for existing," Kelsie said. She turned her back on him. She walked around Sloane's car, squeezing through the pedestrian gate, and began the long walk up the driveway.

She didn't look back. If she had, she might have seen Cornelius's hand clench into a fist at his side, his knuckles turning white.

She marched straight to her room and locked the door. She threw her purse on the bed and ripped the black Centurion card out. She grabbed the heavy card and, with a surge of adrenaline, slammed it against the sharp corner of her mahogany desk. Once. Twice. On the third strike, the metal creased, then snapped in two jagged pieces.

She swept them into the trash.

Then she took her phone. She opened Cornelius's contact. Block Caller. Then she renamed him: DO NOT ANSWER.

She pulled her suitcase from the closet. She couldn't leave tonight-she had no car and nowhere to go-but she started packing.

At 2:00 AM, a floorboard in the hallway outside her room gave a familiar, weighted creak. She didn't need to see a shadow under the door to know who was standing there, waiting. The silence itself was a demand.

Kelsie stared at the door in the dark. Tears streamed down her face, hot and fast. He was outside. She knew he was standing right there in the hallway.

She turned off her phone. She pulled the covers over her head and curled into a ball. She didn't open the door.