SEVEN NIGHTS WITH MY STEPFATHER

The highway north was a white tunnel of snow and headlights. Six hours felt like sixty. Every mile I drove, the radio lost another station until there was nothing but static and the low hum of the engine and my own heartbeat. I kept replaying the phone call on a loop.

Come to the lake house tomorrow night.

I had no idea what that meant, and my brain refused to guess. Every time I tried, panic clawed up my throat, so I shut the thoughts down and focused on the road. Just get the money. Pay the debt. Survive the week. Go home. Simple.

Except nothing about Cassian Voss had ever been simple.

By the time the GPS told me I was twenty minutes away, the snow had thickened into a full blizzard. The wipers could barely keep up. My knuckles ached from gripping the wheel. I hadn’t eaten, hadn’t stopped once, not even to pee. I just drove, like if I slowed down the loan sharks would somehow catch up and drag me out of the car.

At last the private road appeared, unmarked except for a single black mailbox with a silver V etched on the side. I turned in. The tires crunched over fresh powder, the pines closing in on both sides like silent guards. The lake house rose out of the darkness ahead of me, three stories of glass and timber glowing gold against the storm. It looked exactly the same and completely different, bigger, colder, lonelier.

I killed the engine and sat there for a full minute, engine ticking itself cool, breath fogging the windshield. My overnight bag was on the passenger seat, pathetic next to the weight of what I was about to do. I grabbed it, stepped out into the wind, and the front door opened before I reached the steps.

He was waiting.

Cassian stood in the doorway, one hand in the pocket of black trousers, the other holding a cigarette that burned slow and red between his fingers. He wore a charcoal sweater that clung to the kind of body a man in his forties had no right to own, broad shoulders, narrow waist, every line speaking of money and discipline and time spent doing whatever the hell he wanted. The years had only sharpened him. The silver at his temples made the black of his hair look crueler. His eyes, winter gray, winter cold, locked on me the second I appeared.

A camera hung around his neck. A real one, not a phone. Professional, heavy, the kind fashion photographers use. The strap cut across his chest like a warning.

Nostalgia slammed into me so hard I almost staggered. This porch was where he used to push me on the tire swing. That window up there was the one I’d sneak out of at sixteen. The dock I could just make out through the snow was where he taught me to skip stones and told me I could do anything I wanted when I grew up.

I stopped at the bottom step, snow soaking through my boots. My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

“Hi.”

He took a slow drag, the cherry flaring, then exhaled smoke into the night. “You’re late.”

“The roads—”

“I don’t care about the roads.” He stepped aside, motioning me in with the cigarette. “Get inside before you freeze.”

I climbed the steps. Up close he smelled exactly the same, pine, tobacco, something expensive and male that had lived in my dreams far more than it should have. I brushed past him, careful not to touch, and the heat of the house swallowed me whole. The foyer was dark wood and flickering firelight, the massive Christmas tree in the corner dripping with red ornaments and nothing else. No presents underneath. No tinsel. Just blood-red glass and white lights, beautiful and severe.

He closed the door behind me. The click of the latch sounded final.

I set my bag down and turned to face him, hugging my arms across my chest. “Okay. I’m here. The money—”

“Will be wired the second the seven nights are over,” he said calmly, tapping ash into a crystal tray. “Not a minute sooner.”

My stomach dropped. “You said—”

“I said the debt would be gone by tomorrow morning. It will. I bought the note an hour after we hung up. Those men work for me now. They won’t touch you again.” He lifted the camera, checked something on the back screen, then let it hang again. “But the money stays in my account until you earn it.”

Earn it. The words hung between us like smoke.

I swallowed. “How?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just studied me the way he used to when he knew I was lying about homework or boys or parties. Like he could see straight through clothes and skin and every flimsy defense I’d built in the last six years.

Finally he took one last drag, crushed the cigarette beneath his shoe, and stepped closer. Close enough that I had to tip my head back to hold his gaze.

“Seven nights, Ivy. Seven nights of complete obedience. You call me Sir. You do exactly what I say, when I say it. No questions. No limits you don’t speak aloud, and even then I might ignore them.” His voice was low, almost gentle, which made it worse. “You give me everything I ask for, and on the eighth morning you drive away free and clear. House in your name. Debt erased. Life goes on.”

My mouth went dry. “And if I say no to something?”

His smile was slow, sharp, beautiful in the most terrifying way. “Then you leave tonight. The debt comes back. The men come back. And I wash my hands of you forever.”

He let that settle, let the silence stretch until I could hear the fire crackling and my own pulse roaring.

I found my voice somehow. “Why the camera?”

He glanced down at it like he’d forgotten it was there, then lifted it slightly, thumb brushing the lens. His eyes came back to mine, darker now, hungry.

“Because I discovered something while you were gone, little girl.” He took another step, close enough that the heat of his body reached me through my coat. “I discovered that photographing beautiful things while they break for me… brings me pleasure.”

My breath hitched.

He leaned in, lips almost brushing my ear, voice a whisper that sank straight into my bones.

“And you, Ivy, have always been the most beautiful thing I was never allowed to break.”