“I was good to you, Lena.After our father died, I held that hotel together.I covered for your mistakes and protected you from the board and made sure you looked competent when you were barely holding on, when you were drowning in grief and debt and the mess he left behind.I was more of a family to you than anyone.”He stopped pacing, turning to face me with eyes that burned with righteous fury.“And you still chose him.The man who bought you like property.The criminal who treats you like a possession.You chose Raphael Antonov over your own brother.”
“I didn’t know you were my brother.”
“You should have known.”His voice broke.“You should have felt it.The connection.The bond.We’re blood, Lena.That should mean something.It should mean more than some arrangement with a Russian mob thug who doesn’t even?—”
The mark on my shoulder flared with warmth, Raphael’s presence surging like a bonfire suddenly fed oxygen.He was close now, closer than before.I could feel his emotions clearly since I woke, terror and fury and love so fierce it pressed against my sternum.His wolf was howling, wild and enraged, and his human mind was calculating distances and obstacles and the fastest path to reach me.Every mile that closed between us strengthened our connection.
I held onto that warmth and forced myself to keep Michael talking.
“What about Stephanie?”
His expression shifted.Pain and guilt and defiance warring across his features.“That was an accident.”
“An accident?”
“She found me in the supply closet.”He resumed pacing, more agitated now, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.“The night before the fountain incident.I was preparing the blood for the next morning, and she walked in and saw everything.I tried to explain, tried to make her understand that I was doing it for you, to get your attention, to make you need me the way I needed you.But she wouldn’t listen.”His voice dropped to a whisper.“She said she was going to tell you.Going to ruin everything I had worked for.I didn’t mean to hurt her.I just needed her to stop screaming.She kept bleeding.And then I had to do something with all that blood.”
Horror coiled in my stomach.Stephanie.Kind, gentle Stephanie who had arranged flowers for my father’s funeral and cried at the memorial service.Who had told me stories about my mother and covered shifts when other staff called in sick.Dead because she discovered Michael’s sabotage.Dead because she tried to protect me.
“And the corgi?Winston?”
Michael’s face hardened.“I needed to get your attention.”
“Maya’s dog.You killed Maya’s dog.”
“You weren’t seeing me.You were too wrapped up in the contract, in Raphael, in trying to save the hotel.I had to do something drastic.”
“The heating?The fountain?”
“You were too focused on him.Too distracted by your arrangement.I had to create problems only I could solve.Had to make you need me.”
Each confession landed like a sledgehammer blow.Every crime laid bare, every twisted justification exposed.The man I had trusted was a murderer.The colleague I had confided in was the source of every terror I had suffered.Every late-night conversation, every sympathetic smile, every moment of connection had been a performance designed to make me dependent on him.
“You’re looking at me like I’m a monster.”Michael stopped pacing.His voice went cold in a way that made my blood freeze.“I did all of that for you.To get your attention.To make you need me the way I needed you.But you never turned to me.You turned to him instead.”His lip curled with disgust.“What does he give you that I couldn’t?What makes him worth more than your own brother?”
“Michael, please.This isn’t going to end the way you want it to.”
“No.”He moved toward me, and this time I could not flinch away.He crouched in front of my chair, his face inches from mine, his breath hot against my skin.His eyes were too bright, almost feverish, and this close I could see the shadows beneath them.He had not slept properly in days.Maybe weeks.“This is exactly how it’s going to end.You’re going to understand.You’re going to accept me as your brother.And then we’re going to leave together.Start over somewhere no one knows us.Be the family Richard denied us both.”
His eyes were bright with a hope that only came from madness.He genuinely believed this.Believed that confessing his crimes would make me embrace him as family.Believed that knowing the truth would erase the terror and the betrayal and the dead bodies he had left in his wake.Believed that we could drive away from here together, siblings reunited, and build a new life on the ashes of everything he had destroyed.
The bond pulsed again.Raphael was almost here.I could feel him like a storm about to break, all fury and need and love.His wolf was straining against his control, demanding blood, demanding his mate.
“I can’t leave with you, Michael.”
“Why not?”His voice cracked.“Because of him?Because of Raphael?He doesn’t deserve you.He manipulated your family and treated you like an object he could use and discard.I’m offering you a real family.A brother who actually loves you.Who has loved you since the first day I saw you in that hotel, walking through the lobby like you owned the world, like you had never known what it meant to be invisible.”
“You killed Stephanie.”
“For you.”
“You terrorized me for months.”
“To make you need me.”
“That’s not love.”The words came out stronger than I expected, fueled by warmth flooding through the claiming bite.Raphael’s love, feeding my courage.“That’s obsession.What you’re describing isn’t family, Michael.It’s captivity.You’ve tied me to a chair in your dead mother’s house and you’re asking me to thank you for it.”
His face changed.
