SEVEN NIGHTS WITH MY STEPFATHER novel Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Sleep became a stranger after I discovered the account.

Every night I lay in the dark, phone glowing under the covers like a guilty secret, scrolling through CV Gallery until my eyes burned. The images were exquisite, haunting, erotic in a way that made my stomach twist with disgust and something darker I refused to name. My own blurred silhouette appeared again and again: the arch of my spine in the kitchen light, the curve of my hip against the marble counter, the way my back bowed when he told me to look at him.

I hated them.

I hated that strangers were looking at me, touching themselves to me, commenting with fire emojis and filthy suggestions.

I hated that part of me still felt a sick thrill knowing he had chosen those exact frames.

Then the message came.

A private video attachment from a number I had deleted but still recognized instantly.

I should have ignored it.

I clicked play.

The living-room couch. Firelight flickering over bare skin. Me, legs spread wide, Cassian moving inside me with slow, devastating thrusts. The camera caught everything: the way my breasts bounced with each stroke, the desperate clutch of my hands on his back, the exact moment I shattered around him, mouth open in a silent scream that the microphone somehow caught anyway-a raw, broken moan that echoed through my tiny bedroom like a ghost.

The video ended on his release spilling across my stomach.

Another message followed seconds later.

I miss this moan.

My hands shook so violently I nearly dropped the phone. I blocked the number, deleted the thread, turned the phone face-down, and cried into my pillow until dawn.

The seven days had never been about debt.

They had been a carefully laid trap.

And I had walked straight into it.

A month later, I started working evenings at the city library.

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The job was quiet, mindless: reshelving returns, wiping down tables, guiding lost students to the right floor. The routine dulled the edges of memory. Slowly, painfully, I began to feel like a person again instead of a collection of blurred photographs.

That night I was on the late shift with Jonas, the grad student who worked weekends. We split the floors as usual-he took the noisy first level with its study groups and coffee spills, I took the third floor stacks, the one nobody visited after eight p.m.

I hated the third floor. It was too quiet, too dim, the kind of silence that pressed against your eardrums. But someone had left an avalanche of books on every table, and Jonas had finals coming up, so I volunteered.

I pushed the metal cart between the rows, sliding volumes back into place with soft thumps. Literature, art history, photography theory. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I kept my earbuds in but no music playing-just the illusion of company.

Row 770-oversized art books.

I reached high to slot a heavy monograph on Mapplethorpe into its gap, standing on tiptoes, when warm breath brushed the shell of my ear.

“I miss you, little girl.”

A hand clamped over my mouth before the scream could escape.

My body recognized him before my mind caught up: the scent of cedar and darkroom

chemicals, the exact pressure of his palm, the way his chest pressed against my back like it had a hundred times before.

Cassian.

Here.

In the library.

On the third floor where no one ever came after nine.

I struggled, elbows jerking, but he held me easily arm banded across my waist, pulling me deeper between the stacks until the cart was out of sight and the emergency exit sign bathed

us in dim red.

His mouth found my ear again.

“Shh. You don’t want Jonas to hear, do you?”

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I felt it in my throat. I shook my head frantically, tears already burning.

He loosened his hand but didn’t let go.

“I’ve been watching you for weeks,” he whispered, voice velvet and steel. “Every night you

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walk these aisles alone. Every night you think you’re safe.”

His fingers slid down my arm, slow, deliberate, until they laced with mine.

“I tried to let you go,” he said. “I really did.”

I couldn’t breathe.

He turned me gently, pressing my back to the shelves, books digging into my spine. In the red glow his eyes looked almost black.

“But then I saw you up here, reaching for that top shelf, and all I could think about was how perfectly you fit against me when you’re stretched out like that.”

His thumb brushed my lower lip, the same way he had the very first night.

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