Escaping The Cheater For My Hitman Stepbrother

The floor was wet. That was the first thing I registered — cold, sticky wetness soaking through the back of my shirt, smelling like cheap whiskey and something metallic.

The second thing was the voice.

Not from the bar. From somewhere deeper. A memory that didn't belong to this moment — fists against my ribs, a boot on my throat, a man screaming about money I didn't owe. The crack of bone. Then nothing.

I opened my eyes.

Dim yellow light. A ceiling stained brown from years of cigarette smoke. The underground bar on Millford, the one without a sign. I was on the floor between two overturned stools, and my skull throbbed where it had kissed the concrete.

Three feet away, Julian Mercer sat slumped against the bar counter, pressing his palm to a gash above his left eyebrow. Blood ran between his fingers in a thin red line. A broken bottle neck lay near his knee, its jagged edge still wet.

He looked at me with those soft, wounded eyes — the ones that used to make me stupid.

"Kira... babe, what happened? I think I blacked out. Did someone hit me?"

I stared at him.

The gash on his forehead was from the bottle I'd smashed across it. I remembered now. All of it. The way he'd laughed into his phone in the bathroom, not knowing I was outside the door. The woman's voice purring back. The pet name he used — *angel* — the one he told me was only mine.

And behind that, layered underneath like a bruise beneath a bruise, the echo of another life. Debt collectors. A stairwell. My own blood on linoleum.

I wasn't doing this again.

"Kira?" Julian's voice cracked. He blinked hard, selling the confusion. "I don't — I don't remember anything. Why am I bleeding?"

"Because I hit you with a bottle," I said.

His act faltered. Just a flicker — his jaw tightened, his eyes sharpened — then the mask slid back into place.

"You're not serious. Why would you —"

"Stop."

I pushed myself up off the floor. My knees ached. My palms were cut from the glass. I didn't care.

Julian reached for me. "Baby, sit down. You're confused. Let me —"

"There's a towel on the bar," I said, stepping over his outstretched legs. "Get it yourself."

"Kira!"

I didn't turn around. My fingers found the ring on my left hand — that pathetic little band with its cloudy stone that he'd sworn was a real diamond. I'd believed him for eleven months. Eleven months of covering his rent, his tabs, his parking tickets. Eleven months of *angel, you're the only one.*

The drain grate was set into the floor near the bar's back exit. Rusted iron bars over a black hole that smelled like sewage.

I pulled the ring off and held it over the grate.

"What are you doing?" Julian scrambled to his feet, swaying. Blood dripped off his chin. "Kira, that cost