CLAIMED BY MY STEPBROTHER

Lila The lilies were wrong. White lilies everywhere cascading from marble pedestals, woven into wreaths, drowning the grand hall in a sweetness that had nothing to do with Viktor Voss. My father was cigarette smoke and cold silences and a jaw that tightened instead of speaking. White lilies were for men who were mourned. I wasn't sure my father qualified. I stood near the tall windows in a black dress that fit me differently than it had two years ago and held a glass of red wine I had no intention of drinking. The hall was packed. Distant relatives performing grief with the practiced ease of people who understood the social mathematics of a Voss funeral. Associates with careful eyes already calculating what came next. A cluster of suits near the bar openly discussing restructuring, not even pretending, which my father would have respected. His empire didn't pause for sentiment. He wouldn't have wanted it to. I'd tugged the hemline down twice. Stopped after the third time. Marcus appeared at my elbow with a glass of water and the expression of a man who wanted to help and understood he couldn't. "You don't have to talk to anyone," he said quietly. "I know." He stood beside me anyway. Two months of dinners. Long walks. The construction of something that might become more if I let it. He brought coffee and asked before he held my hand and his world had no armed men in it. Across the room a woman in a black wrap dress touched the arm of a man I didn't recognize and leaned in close, whispering something that made him nod slowly, eyes moving toward the cluster of suits at the bar. Two tables away an older man I vaguely recognized as one of my father's eastern associates was speaking quietly to a younger man writing something on his phone. Taking notes. Viktor Voss wasn't cold yet and they were already dividing him up. "Someone asked me about the Meridian property," Marcus said carefully. "One of the men near the entrance. He said he was a family associate." "What did you say?" "That I didn't know anything about it." He paused. "Which is true." "Good." I turned back to the room. "Don't know anything about any of it tonight." He nodded. Touched the back of my hand once, briefly, and moved toward the bar to give me space. I watched him go and felt the guilt of someone who couldn't give what was being offered. The guilt passed. It always did. What stayed, what always stayed in rooms like this one was the memory I spent the most energy not thinking about. A hallway. Seven years ago. Sixteen years old with my heart slamming against my ribs and Damien's hand burning through the fabric of my dress. His breath uneven against my temple. The whole world narrowing to the space between us charged and impossible and right there, right at the edge of something that couldn't be taken back before he stepped away. Walked out. Six months later they told me he was dead. I had grieved him in ways that shamed me. Not the grief you talked about. The other kind; the kind that lived in your chest like a splinter you couldn't locate precisely enough to remove, that you carried silently for years while telling yourself you were completely fine. I was completely fine. Stop, I told myself. Your father is in the ground. I set my wine down and pressed two fingers briefly to my sternum. Forty minutes. Then I was done. A hand on my arm… soft, gloved, belonging to a woman I didn't recognize. "Your father was a great man, darling. A great man." She squeezed and moved on without waiting for my response. Behind her a man in a gray suit caught my eye, held it one second too long, then looked deliberately toward the group near the bar. You were present for the performance and excluded from the script. I'd understood that since I was old enough to notice the way conversations stopped when I walked into rooms, the way my father's associates smiled at me with their mouths and looked past me with their eyes. Marcus reappeared at the edge of my vision near the bar now, speaking to someone, his shoulders carrying the tension of a man out of his depth and determined not to show it. He caught my eye across the room and raised his chin slightly. You okay? I nodded. He turned back to his conversation and I turned back to the window. The double doors at the far end of the hall slammed open. Not opened. Slammed with a force that sent one ornate handle cracking hard into the wall and drove a collective flinch through every person in the room simultaneously. The sound cut through the air like a blade and every voice died instantly, completely, as if the room had been unplugged. Silence fell like a guillotine. He stood in the doorway. Tall, six-three at least with broad shoulders and a frame that made his black suit look like armor. Dark hair and sharp jaw. A thin scar through his left brow that hadn't been there before. Tattoos climbing from his collar, curling past his cuffs. Hands loose at his sides. He didn't search the room. He already knew where I'd be. His eyes found mine and stopped. Dark and burning. Fixed with the focus of a man who had crossed a very large distance to stand in exactly this spot. Some people arrive subtly but Damien Voss arrived like a reckoning that had been building for seven years and had finally run out of patience. The wine glass slipped from my fingers and shattered on the marble. Red spreading across the floor like a slow bloom. I didn't look down. He walked forward. Straight through the frozen crowd, which parted without a word. The armed men at the corners…men paid to intervene tensed as he passed and went still. Not one of them moved. I understood at that moment what seven years had built. He stopped in front of me. Cold air and dark cologne unchanged in ways that hit me before I could stop them. The scar was new. Everything else wasn't. His eyes moved over my face slowly…jaw, mouth, eyes, the way you look at something you've needed to verify for a very long time. "Damien." Barely sound. "They said you were…" "I know what they said." Low yet rough. His hand closed around my wrist like a shackle. "You're done here." The world tilted. His arm hooked around my waist and I was up, thrown over his shoulder in one motion that knocked the breath completely out of me. My dress rode up. I drove my fists into his back. "Put me down" His palm landed on the back of my bare thigh. Fingers spread wide. Slow and deliberate. "Quiet." "Little sister." Two words. Base of my spine. A lit match. Heat flooded my face and I hated myself for it before it even fully arrived, hated the way my body registered those words before my fury could catch up, hated that seven years had done nothing to change that response. My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. The room spun past as he carried me; ceiling, chandelier, frozen faces, the dark rectangle of the open doors ahead. Marcus's voice cut through the noise behind us, sharp and startled, calling my name. I heard him but Damien didn't stop, didn't slow, didn't acknowledge that any of it existed. That was the most frightening part. Not the abduction. The absolute indifference to everything except me. Out through the grand doors. Cool night air hit my exposed skin. My dress was around my hips and a camera flash went off somewhere below us on the steps. Someone photographing this, turning it into evidence that would exist forever and there was nothing I could do about any of it. A blacked-out SUV waited at the base of the steps. Engine running. Door open. He put me in. Climbed in after. Door slammed. Child locks clicked soft, precise, and final. The car moved. I scrambled to the far door and pressed my back against it, dragging my dress down with shaking hands. He sat across the wide seat watching me. Forearms on his knees, completely calm. Like this was routine. "They told us you were dead." My voice shook. "My father confirmed it…" "Your father lied." Flat. "He was good at that." "Where are you taking me?" He looked at me. Slowly. The wrecked hair. The dress. The thighs I was pressing together. His jaw tightened once and went still. "Somewhere safe," he said. "Safe." Almost a laugh. "You just kidnapped me from my father's wake in front of everyone…" "And I'd do it again." His hand crossed the seat and gripped my thigh, pulling me toward him before I could react. Warm through the thin fabric. "You have no idea what tonight would have become if I hadn't walked through those doors." "What does that mean?" He looked at me. Said nothing. "Damien." I pulled at his grip. "What does that mean?!" "Exactly what I said." His thumb pressed once against my thigh. "You're safe." "I'm in a car I can't get out of." "Yes," he said. "And you're safe." I turned to the window. "You left," I said. "I thought you were dead for seven years and you never…" "I know." "That's all you have." "For now." I pressed my lips together and said nothing else. The SUV sped deeper into the glittering night. I sat in the dark and felt the splinter in my chest do something it hadn't done in seven years. Pulse.