My Stepson Haunted My Dreams

Caught You

The dining room screamed old Manhattan money. A mahogany table ran down the center, covered in crystal, heavy silver, and white orchids.

Elara sat at the head of the table, perfectly positioned to Victor's right. Her heavy diamond ring caught the light every time she lifted her water glass, a constant, frozen reminder of her new reality.

But she wasn't looking at her ring. She couldn't. Because directly across the table, framing her entire field of vision, sat Ivan.

He had fixed the slight disorder of his appearance from earlier. He'd put on a dark tie, his jacket was buttoned, and he was currently listening to an elderly board member speak with a quiet, absolute focus.

"The Edinburgh acquisition was flawless, Victor," an older man in a tailored tuxedo said from halfway down the table, raising his glass toward Ivan. "Most men would have taken three years to fold those North Sea pipeline assets into the Ashford portfolio. Your boy restructured the entire holding in eight months and locked out three competing sovereign funds in the process. The street is still reeling."

Victor smiled—the proud, satisfied smile of a man who owned the best asset in the room. "Ivan doesn't like wasting time. Do you, son?"

Ivan didn't look at his father. He swirled the red wine in his glass, his movements fluid and effortlessly elegant.

"Time is the only thing we can't buy, Father," Ivan replied, his voice low and smooth, carrying easily over the clink of silverware. "It would be a shame to waste it."

As he spoke, his grey eyes shifted. Just an inch. Just enough to lock onto Elara over the flame of the silver candelabra.

Elara's breath hitched in her throat. She looked away quickly, focusing intently on her salad, but her skin felt like it was on fire.

"He's a masterpiece, isn't he?" a voice whispered from Elara's left.

It was a young heiress in a blush-pink gown—someone's daughter brought along to fill the table. She was speaking to another girl next to her, their heads bowed together, eyes locked on the opposite end of the table.

"I heard he crushed the whole North Sea market before the board even knew he was in Europe," the other girl whispered, her gaze tracking the sharp line of Ivan's jaw over the rim of her crystal glass. "He looks like a dark angel. If he looked at me with that kind of focus for even two seconds, I think I'd forget how to breathe."

"Forget looking — did you see his hands? The way he controls the room without even trying? He's like... the ultimate bachelor. Every girl in New York has been waiting for Victor to bring him back. He's literally the man of my dreams."

The man of your dreams.

Elara gripped her fork a little tighter. No, she thought, a bittersweet ache blooming in her chest. He is the man of my dreams. Literally.

But to these women, Ivan was a golden prize, a brilliant, unattainable star of high society. To Elara, he was the faceless shadow who had held her in the dark for three years, whispering her name as if she were his entire world.

The contrast was suffocating.

As the night went on, Ivan remained the absolute center of gravity. Every conversation drifted toward him. Politicians, CEOs, socialites—they all orbited. Ivan navigated it with the ease of someone who had stopped noticing the attention years ago.

Elara noticed, though.

"So, Victor," Margot cut in, tapping her nails against her wine glass. She leaned forward, eyes darting between Victor and Elara. "We've talked business all night. When do we celebrate the actual wedding? You set a date yet?"

The question was dropped like a stone into the center of the table. The low chatter around them died down. The heiresses stopped whispering. Even the older board members turned their attention to the head of the table. Everyone was waiting.

Elara felt her throat go completely dry. The weight of dozens of eyes buried into her, but the heaviest glare came from directly across the table. Ivan had stopped moving. The wine glass was frozen halfway to his lips.

"Three months from now." Victor's tone left no room for argument. He reached over and covered Elara's shaking hand with his. "The Newport estate is already booked. Small ceremony. Just family."

When Victor's hand pressed down on hers, Elara wanted to rip hers away.

Around the table, the heiresses and socialites stared. Their eyes cut into her like little knives. They didn't have to say it. She could read it on their faces: Gold-digger. Parasite.

She stared at her salad plate. Her throat tightened. Her eyes burned. She chanted in her head: Think of Grandpa. Think of the forty-seven thousand dollars.

If it kept him alive on that hospital bed, she wouldn't care if this room viewed her as nothing more than an expensive high-society w***e. She would bear it.

"Three months?" Margot gasped, a fake smile plastered on her face. "Oh, you do move fast." Then, Margot turned her sharp gaze directly toward the young billionaire. "What do you think, Ivan? A new stepmother—who's even younger than you are."

The silence that followed was suffocating. Elara forced herself to look up. Ivan set his glass down on the mahogany table with a soft, ominous clink. He didn't look at Margot. He didn't look at his father.

His grey eyes locked onto Elara's face, holding her hostage across the long table. The warmth from his earlier laughter was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, dangerous storm.

"I think," Ivan said, his voice dropping low, "three months is a long time. A lot can change before the ink dries."

Victor chuckled, missing the lethal undercurrent completely. "Spoken like a true businessman. Always looking for variables."

"Always," Ivan murmured, his gaze dropping to where Victor's hand was still covering hers.

The dinner ended, but the storm inside Elara only grew. Every polite smile she had forced, every touch of Victor's proprietary hand, had felt like a slow suffocation. By the time she finally lay down in the heavy silence of the guest suite, her mind was a chaotic blur of a man.

Elara slept. And like clockwork, the dream took her.

The familiar, thick static electricity filled the void. The ambient noise of the real world vanished, leaving only a vast, waiting darkness.

Then, a heavy footstep echoed through the darkness. Slow. Deliberate. Certain.

This time, he had a face. He had a name. There was no faceless mystery left to protect her from the truth. It was Ivan.

He walked over to her, closing the final distance with an unyielding, breathless intensity. Before she could even gasp, he reached out and grabbed her hand, gripping it tightly.

The heat of his touch violently consumed her entire nervous system, binding them together in the dark.

"I caught you!"