My Stepbrother Is My Secret novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Under the Table
With her stepbrother's hand on her thigh under the tablecloth, Cassandra hears his mother make him her boss and hand her a codicil she knows is forged; she refuses in front of everyone, sneaks to his room at 2 a.m., and his mother knocks.
My stepbrother had his hand on my thigh under my grandfather's dining table when his mother stood up to make a toast.
I kept my face very still.
Mateo kept his very still too.
His thumb moved one slow inch along the inside of my knee, under the white tablecloth, and I nearly dropped my fork.
"To family," Pilar said, and lifted her wine.
My father lifted his. "To family."
I lifted my water glass and didn't look at the man beside me.
Eight months.
Eight months of Sunday dinners at this table, his knee against mine.
His hand found me under the linen while our parents talked about the weather.
Nobody had ever noticed.
Nobody ever looked under a tablecloth.
"And to Mateo," Pilar said.
His thumb stopped.
"As of tomorrow morning," she said, smiling right at me, "my son is the new Vice President of Operations at Varela Construction."
My father clapped.
I didn't.
Vice President of Operations was the job directly over mine.
I was the superintendent on the Mines Road warehouse.
I had poured concrete for my grandfather's company since I was nineteen.
I had asked my father for that job in April.
He'd said I wasn't ready.
"Congratulations, Ibarra," I said.
That's what I called Mateo in public. Ibarra. Formal and distant, as if I barely tolerated him.
"Thanks, Varela," he said.
Under the table, his hand slid off my leg.
"There's one more thing." Pilar set her glass down and took a folder out of the sideboard drawer. "Ruben, you tell her. She listens to you."
My father put his reading glasses on and didn't look at me.
"Mija, Pilar was cleaning out your abuelo's desk last month. She found something."
She slid a single typed page across the table to me.
It was a codicil to my grandfather's will.
I read it twice.
Abuelo had left me his fifty-one percent of the company.
It sat in a trust with my father as trustee until my twenty-eighth birthday, in December.
This page moved it all into something called Varela Family Holdings.
If the family voted me unfit to lead, the shares were theirs.
The family was my father, Pilar, and Mateo.
At the bottom was my grandfather's name, in a steady, perfect hand.
Ignacio Varela.
The date beside it said July 10, last year.
I went cold from the scalp down.
"We'd need you to sign an acknowledgment," Pilar said. "Just so the lawyer can move forward before your birthday. By Friday, ideally."
"It's only paperwork, mija," my father said. "Nothing changes. We're one family now."
I put the page down.
"No."
Pilar's smile didn't move. "No?"
"I'm not signing it." I stood up. My chair scraped the tile. "And I'm not reporting to him."
I didn't look at Mateo when I said it.
I felt him look at me.
"Cassandra, sit down," my father said. "Please. We're eating."
"Your grandfather knew exactly what you are, mija," Pilar said softly. "That's why he wrote it."
I picked up my plate, carried it to the kitchen, scraped it into the trash, and walked out the back door into the dark.
Nobody followed me.
Nobody was allowed to.
At two in the morning I opened my bedroom door.
My room was in the west wing of the house, two doors down from my father and his new wife.
Mateo's was at the far end of the east wing.
Forty-one steps.
I'd counted them in February, the week our parents were on their honeymoon, and I'd been counting them ever since.
Barefoot, I went under the arcade, past the bougainvillea on the pillars, into the open courtyard.
The stone was still warm from the day.
The moon was on the dry fountain.
I stepped over the third flagstone past the fountain, the one that rocks and clicks.
Across the courtyard, at the end of the east wing, his blind was halfway up.
That meant come.
The kitchen light snapped on.
I threw myself flat against the nearest pillar.
Bougainvillea thorns went into my shoulder.
Through the kitchen window I could see my father in his robe, running the tap.
He filled a glass and shook a pill out of an orange bottle.
He took it and stood there looking out into the courtyard.
Right at my pillar.
I didn't breathe.
"Ay, Papá," he said to nobody. To my grandfather. "What do I do with her?"
He turned off the light.
I waited a full minute before I moved.
Three soft knocks.
The door opened before the third one finished, and Mateo pulled me in by the wrist and shut it behind me without a sound.
He was in gray sweatpants and nothing else.
His room smelled like his soap and the cold air from the vent.
"Did you know?" I whispered.
"About the job." His voice was low and rough. "She told me Thursday. Not about the paper."
"You didn't tell me about the job."
"I was going to tell you tonight."
"With your hand on my leg at dinner? That was the plan?"
"Cass."
"Don't Cass me." I shoved his chest. He didn't move. "He couldn't hold a pen, Mateo. On July tenth he couldn't even hold a fork."
He took my face in both hands.
"Then I believe you," he said.
That was the thing about him.
He never said anything he didn't mean.
I kissed him so hard his back hit the door.
He made a sound into my mouth and caught me under the thighs and lifted me, and I locked my legs around his waist.
"I'm so angry at you," I said against his neck.
"I know."
"I'm still angry."
"Be angry," he said, and walked me toward the bed.
Three hard knocks hit the door.
We froze.
"Mateo." His mother's voice. "I know you're awake. Open the door."
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