My Stepbrother, My Enemy {BL}

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As I stepped through our front door, I couldn’t shake the feeling that our house was more like a museum than a home. The marble floors were polished to perfection, and those giant vases seemed like they could hide a body or at least a really embarrassing secret.

I told myself I was just making a quick stop to grab some clothes and maybe those notebooks I left all over my desk for school. And yeah, I definitely wanted to fish out that snowflake charm I tucked away after the holidays because Gigi wouldn’t stop teasing me about how ’sentimental’ it made me look.

It was oddly quiet inside, the kind of silence that felt heavy, broken only by the hum of the air conditioning and some faint clinking of dishes in the kitchen where the maids were likely finishing up their afternoon chores.

I figured no one else was around...Mom was at some spa retreat now she was the wife of a billionaire, and Keith was usually buried in work or whatever shady stuff kept him out of sight.

I hoped Adrien wasn’t around.

As I made my way down the hallway, my sneakers squeaked softly against the floor, which made me cringe because I was no ninja when it came to being quiet. I noticed the study door was slightly open, which was odd since Keith treated that room like a fortress.

Then I heard voices drifting out...low murmurs that sparked my curiosity, which always seems to get the better of me when I should probably just mind my own business.

One voice was definitely Keith’s, smooth and controlled, sounding almost like he was narrating a corporate training session even in casual chat. The other voice belonged to Mr. Carlby, that old business associate of his who always arrived at family events with a forced grin and a handshake that felt like gripping a cold fish.

Their tones were tense, laced with that urgent vibe that business folks use to talk about stock prices or mergers. Yet something about it made my skin crawl.

I froze in the hallway, my hand hovering in mid-air as if I was about to knock, even though that wasn’t on my mind at all. At first, it sounded like typical boardroom chatter, just numbers and strategies so dry they’d bore anyone without an MBA.

But then, I heard Logan’s name slip into the conversation, and my heart did this weird flip-flop, like it had suddenly decided to audition for a gymnastics team without giving me a heads-up. Hearing Logan’s name? It hit me like a splash of ice water, pulling me closer despite every instinct telling me to get out of there.