Bound to My Step-brother

Chapter Nine

Roseline's POV

The table was too quiet for a house with this much wrong in it.

I sat across from Victor with a plate of eggs going cold in front of me, waiting for him to ask the question I'd been bracing for since I sat down. Some word, any word, about Lila.

Victor buttered his toast with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything, entirely at ease, as though the morning held nothing more pressing than breakfast itself.

"The Whitlocks called yesterday," he said, not looking up. "Sent their well wishes for Ryker. Whitlock himself, actually, not an assistant. Very concerned when he heard about the fever."

"That was kind of them," I said carefully, watching him for any sign he intended to follow that sentence with something about my daughter. He didn't.

"Good people, the Whitlocks," he went on, reaching for the marmalade. "Old money, properly old, not the sort that forgets its manners the moment it acquires a little standing. Sarah's mother sent a handwritten card. Nobody does that anymore." He smiled faintly, pleased with the memory of it. "Sarah's their eldest, you know. Beautifully raised. Speaks three languages, and plays cello." A family like that doesn't come along often. The sort of woman a man could actually build something with. Something stable." He glanced up at me now, entirely relaxed, pleased with wherever this thought was leading him.

"I think, once Ryker's stronger, we ought to seriously consider it. Sarah, for him. It would settle a great deal, don't you think? Quiet the whispers. Give this house something to be proud of again instead of..." He waved a hand, vague and dismissive, in a gesture that somehow managed to encompass the entire last two months without naming a single part of it directly.

I set my fork down very carefully, because if I didn't, I thought I might throw it.

"You're discussing a wife for your son," I said, "over breakfast, as though it's a decision about which car to buy."

"It's a decision that matters a great deal more than a car," Victor said, ignoring every ounce of the accusation underneath my words. "Sarah is exactly the sort of woman this house needs. Stable bloodline, impeccable reputation, a family that won't draw hunters and mages and scandal to our door simply by existing near it." He took a sip of his coffee, unbothered, as if he hadn't just described my daughter.

"And Lila," I said quietly, "is what, exactly, in this comparison?"

Something flickered behind his eyes, not guilt, I didn't think Victor was capable of guilt anymore, not toward me. Something closer to irritation at having the conversation dragged somewhere he hadn't intended to take it.

"Lila is a separate matter," he said, "and one I am handling."

"You are handling nothing," I said, my voice shaking now despite every effort to keep it steady. "You are sitting here talking about cellos and handwritten cards while my daughter is God knows where, and you expect me to nod along and agree that Sarah Whitlock would make a lovely addition to this family."

Victor set down his cup, and for the first time that morning, real annoyance crossed his face.

"I expect you," he said, low and even, "to understand that I am trying to salvage what's left of this household's standing while you sit in your grief and accomplish nothing productive with it."

I stared at him, and for a moment I genuinely could not find words sharp enough for what I wanted to say back.

I hadn't let myself think about the beginning in years. But sitting at the table, with a this stranger, I couldn't stop it from coming back.

We were friends first. Long before any of this, before the mansion, before the wedding, before Lila was even a thought in the world. Victor had been kind then. He used to call just to talk, no agenda behind it, and I used to look forward to those calls more than I ever let myself admit, even to myself.

I loved him quietly during those years, a small, guilty thread running under a life I'd built with Marcus, a good man who never once gave me a reason to want anyone else.

Victor was engaged by then, to a woman I barely knew, Ryker's mother, gentle and lovely from what little I saw of her. Exactly the kind of match everyone said suited him.

I told myself my feelings for him were simply the ordinary ache of loving a friend a little too much, the kind of thing that faded if you were patient and disciplined enough to wait it out.

It was her death that changed everything. Grief cracked Victor open in ways nothing else ever had, and in the wreckage of it, he finally turned and saw me- the way I'd wanted him to for years.

What came after was reckless. Consuming. We fell into it almost instantly, late-night calls that went on for hours, stolen afternoons I told myself didn't count as anything because nothing had technically happened yet. And then, eventually, something did. I lied to Marcus more times than I could bear to count during those months, working late, visiting a friend, anything but the truth. The truth was that I was falling in love with another man while I still wore my husband's ring on my finger.

I told myself it was fate. That grief had simply cleared a path toward something that was always supposed to happen between us. I let myself believe, for years afterward, that whatever guilt I carried from those months had been worth it, because what came next, Victor's devotion, his attention, the way he used to look at me like I was the only thing left in his world, felt like proof the waiting, and the lying, had been worth it.

Now I sat in his house, his wife, watching him discuss another woman for his son over breakfast without once asking about my missing daughter. Now, I understood with clarity that it wasn’t a love that could endure storms.

I had been so certain, once, that our love had been real.

Now I wasn't certain of anything at all.

He stood. Straightened his jacket, checked his watch, entirely unbothered by what he'd just said, as though it hadn't cost me anything at all to hear it.

"I'll confirm the new dinner date with Whitlock this afternoon," he said, already walking toward the door. "Do try to eat something, Roseline. You look unwell."

He left. I sat alone at the table for a long time afterward, staring at the marmalade jar he'd left unclosed. I regretted every bit of this union.