SEVEN NIGHTS WITH MY STEPFATHER novel Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The final full day at the lake house passed like a slow-motion car crash.

The client was a brunette with legs for days and a laugh that filled the studio. Cassian worked with his usual precision, but the energy was wrong. Flat. Every time he glanced at me, I looked away. Every time he said my name, I pretended not to hear. I handed him lenses, adjusted lights, stayed on my mark like a robot. When he tried to catch my eye, I busied myself with cables that didn’t need straightening.

He never touched me. Not once.

When the model left, he closed the studio door and turned to me.

“We need to talk.”

I folded my arms tight across my chest.

“There’s nothing to say. Tomorrow night the seven days are over. I go home. You keep your promise. That’s it.”

He stared at me for a long beat, something raw flickering behind the cold mask he had worn all day.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Come with me.”

I followed him to the study. He opened the laptop, turned it toward me. On the screen was a bank transfer confirmation: $187,400.17 paid in full to an account I recognized as the loan shark’s holding company. Below it, a second transfer-this one to my name-for the exact same amount, labeled “bonus.”

“It’s done,” he said, voice stripped of warmth. “Debt cleared. You’re free to leave now if you want.”

I stared at the numbers, throat closing.

He had paid everything. More than everything.

And he was letting me go without a fight.

I should have felt relief.

Instead it felt like drowning.

I nodded once, turned, and walked upstairs on numb legs. I packed in ten minutes: jeans, sweaters, the few toiletries I had brought. Everything fit into the same small duffel I had arrived with. I left his clothes folded neatly on the bed, the silk robe draped over the chair like a ghost.

He was standing by the front door when I came down, keys in one hand, my car keys in the other.

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“Your car’s warmed up,” he said, holding them out. “Tank’s full.”

I took the keys without touching his fingers.

“Thank you,” I managed. “For the debt.”

He nodded once, eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder.

I walked out.

The cold hit me like a slap. My little Honda sat in the driveway, engine humming softly, windshield already scraped clean. He had thought of everything.

I threw my bag in the back seat, climbed behind the wheel, and drove away without looking in the rear-view mirror.

I cried the entire six hours home. Quiet, ugly tears that fogged the windows and blurred the highway lines. I cried for the girl who had arrived believing she could keep her heart locked up. I cried for the way Cassian had looked at me when I posed for him, like I was the only thing in his universe. I cried because Everett had tasted me too, because I had moaned instead of screamed, because I had let myself become exactly what I feared: a body for rich men to play with while they waited to go home to someone else.

Two days passed in my apartment like nothing had happened.

I showered until my skin was raw. I deleted every photo, every text, every trace of the lake house from my phone. I told myself I was free.

Sarah showed up on the third morning with coffee and pastries, demanding the full story.

I gave her the sanitized version: Cassian’s photography business, the exclusive clients, me assisting for a week to clear Mom’s debt. I left out the kitchen counter, the jacuzzi, the way he had made me come so hard I forgot my own name.

She listened, wide-eyed, then pulled out her phone.

“Okay, but you have to see this,” she said. “There’s this new account blowing up. CV Gallery. The photos are insane. Exactly the kind of thing you described.”

She turned the screen toward me.

My stomach dropped.

The feed was black and white, minimalist, breathtaking. A woman’s spine arched over silk sheets. A close-up of bound wrists. A silhouette against a frozen lake.

Then I scrolled lower.

And there I was.

Face blurred just enough to protect identity, but knew. The curve of my hip in the kitchen

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sunlight. The way my back arched when he told me to look over my shoulder. My breasts, bare and glistening, nipples tight from cold and want.

One caption, simple and devastating:

Little Girl, First Light – CV

My hands shook so hard Sarah had to take the phone.

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