My Sister Stole My Boyfriend — She Had No Idea I Was Sleeping With His Ruthless Father
Part 1
Blood tastes remarkably like copper pennies, but heartbreak tastes like cheap prosecco.
That was my exact thought at my sister’s engagement party.
She was wearing my dream dress, flashing my grandmother’s diamond, and kissing the man I had spent four years loving.
Brian.
She stole him clean and simple.
What she didn’t know, what none of them knew as they toasted to the happy couple, was the dark, terrifying secret sitting at the head of the banquet table.
I was already sleeping with his father.
Biting the inside of my cheek was a bad habit I picked up the day my life fell apart.
And right now, I was chewing the tissue raw.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in the rented community hall, casting a jaundiced yellow glow over the crepe paper streamers Heather had insisted on hanging.
The room smelled like a nauseating mixture of overcooked chicken, stale beer soaked into the floorboards, and my sister’s signature vanilla perfume.
A scent that now made my stomach violently pitch.
I stood near the lukewarm buffet, gripping a plastic cup of prosecco so tightly the sides were beginning to crack.
Across the room, Heather threw her head back, laughing at something Brian had whispered.
Her blonde hair, perfectly curled, bounced against her bare shoulders.
She looked radiant.
She looked like a thief who had gotten away with the heist of the century and was currently spending the money in front of the bank she robbed.
Brian stood beside her, looking vaguely uncomfortable in a navy suit that pulled slightly at the shoulders.
He kept shifting his weight, his eyes darting toward the entrance every few minutes.
He was sweating.
A thin sheen of moisture coated his upper lip.
Brian was always sweating when he felt guilty, a physical tell he couldn’t suppress.
He hadn’t looked at me once since I walked in.
Coward.
My aunt whispered loudly, appearing at my elbow, smelling like mothballs and gin.
I muttered a response, taking a sip of the warm alcohol that went down like battery acid.
I wasn’t here out of maturity.
I was here because staying home meant letting Heather win the narrative.
She wanted me broken, sobbing into a pillow, the tragic, discarded older sister.
Showing up in a backless, emerald green slip dress with sharp eyeliner and a careless smile was my middle finger to her.
It was exhausting.
Beneath the silk, my skin felt tight.
My muscles coiled like rusted springs ready to snap.
Then, the heavy steel doors at the back of the hall opened.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
The low, thrumming hum of chatter died almost instantly, replaced by a suffocating silence.
Dan Robinson stepped inside.
He didn’t just enter a room.
He annexed it.
No tie.
The top two buttons of his crisp white shirt were undone, revealing a sliver of olive skin.
He moved with the quiet, terrifying grace of an apex predator stepping into a cage of trembling rabbits.
Brian visibly flinched.
Brian was soft edges, nervous smiles, and apologies.
Dan was carved out of granite and violence.
Brian croaked out a greeting, his voice cracking slightly before he cleared his throat and tried again.
Dan didn’t smile.
His gaze swept over the cheap decorations, the plastic cups, the terrified suburban relatives.
His voice was low, gravelly, carrying an accent that was mostly erased but still lingered on the vowels.
Heather stepped forward, pasting on a bright, desperate smile, offering to get him a plate of food.
Dan cut her off flatly, refusing the food without even looking at her.
His eyes were scanning the room.
They passed over my aunt, over the DJ packing away a cable, and finally, they landed on me.
My breath caught.
It wasn’t a gasp, just a sudden sharp halt of oxygen in my lungs.
Across the fifty feet of scuffed linoleum, his gaze locked onto mine.
His eyes were the color of wet asphalt, dark and unreadable to anyone else.
But I saw the micro-expression, the slight, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth.
I saw the heavy, possessive slide of his gaze down the slope of my neck to the dip of my collarbone and back up.
My skin flushed violently.
The memory of his hands, calloused, rough, bruising my hips just three hours ago in his penthouse, flashed through my mind with the force of a physical blow.
The faint scent of cedar and gunpowder still clung to my hair, buried beneath my own perfume.
He knew it.
I knew it.
I raised my plastic cup to him in a slow, cynical, mock toast.
Dan’s jaw tightened.
He broke eye contact, finally looking at his son.
Brian shrank under the attention, confirming he was getting married to the sister.
Dan’s tone was entirely conversational, but dripping with a lethality that made my aunt step backward.
Heather’s smile faltered as she weakly defended their falling in love.
Dan finally looked at Heather.
The absolute disdain in his eyes was so cold it could have shattered glass.
He reached into his jacket pocket, causing the two bodyguards to shift and half the room to hold its breath.
He pulled out a thick envelope and tossed it onto the gift table.
It landed with a heavy, muffled thud.
Cash.
A lot of it.
He offered his congratulations without waiting for a thank you.
He turned and walked back toward the doors.
But right before he pushed through, he stopped, glancing over his shoulder directly at me.
The syllables of my name sounded entirely different in his mouth.
Heavier, darker.
The entire room turned to look at me.
Brian stared, his mouth slightly open.
Heather glared.
“Your tire is low,” Dan said, perfectly deadpan, as the entire room stared at us. “I’ll have my driver put air in it before you leave.”
