Chapter 171/Stealing His Brother’s Woman

Chapter 171: 171/Stealing His Brother’s Woman

Chapter 171

Stephanie’s point of view

She drew in a shallow, frantic gasp, the oxygen clearly burning her lungs. She turned away, staring at her broken reflection in the tall vanity mirror with a look of pure self-loathing, before snapping her manic, bloodshot eyes violently toward me.

She pointed a trembling finger at my chest, her voice rising into a feral, hate-filled shriek. "What the living hell did you find in this absolute nobody that you couldn’t find in me?! What the fuck does she have that Isabella lacks for you to choose her over me?!"

Cedric took a massive, authoritative step forward, his towering frame immediately acting as an iron wall, cutting off her access to me and shielding me entirely from her unhinged, violent breakdown. "This has absolutely nothing to do with what I found in her or what you lack, Isabella," he commanded, his voice firm and unyielding. "This is not a goddamn comparison between women or bodies."

"Then what the hell is it?!" she hissed, the pure, unadulterated venom completely consuming her face. "Explain it to me!"

"I loved her," he stated, his gravelly voice dropping into a deep, raw baritone that vibrated straight from the depths of his chest. The absolute, unshielded honesty of his words hit me with a heat that shook my entire soul. "It’s as simple as that. No logic, no reasons. I loved her with all her flaws and all her beauty. I just loved her, period. And I don’t want any other fucking woman in this world."

Those fatal words struck her like a devastating missile, instantly pulverizing whatever microscopic grain of pride she had left. She staggered backward, her pupils dilated and lost. "And me... where the hell do I fit into the equation of your life and your future?" she whispered, completely broken.

"You already knew the exact nature of our arrangement from the very beginning," he answered with a cutting, ice-cold calmness. "You knew the ultimate goal of this marriage from the first day we were forced into an engagement. It’s a blood-alliance for business. It was never going to touch my heart."

She summoned the last remnants of her strength, her face twisting into a mask of pure, vindictive malice as she gestured toward my slightly rounded stomach with an intense, nauseated disgust. "But she is your older brother’s legal wife! Alexander’s woman! And she is pregnant with his child right now! Do you not have a single shred of goddamn shame, sneaking around like a low-class thief to betray your own brother with this level of filthy, depraved garbage?! You’re stealing his woman straight out of his fucking bed!"

In that exact, doomed, and utterly catastrophic second, Cedric’s features turned entirely to stone, a terrifying, unyielding stability locking into his gaze. He spat out the ultimate, ruinous truth a truth that shattered every ceiling above our heads and permanently obliterated any hope of survival or turning back.

"They are *my* children. In blood and in flesh, Isabella," he hissed, his tone steady, calm, and earth-shattering. "They aren’t his."

The blood instantly vanished from her face, leaving her skin a deathly, translucent white, exactly like a corpse rotting in a graveyard.

She stumbled back two full steps, an absolute, paralyzing bewilderment seizing her entire body as she clutched her throat, her lips turning a sickly blue from the sheer magnitude of the shock.

"What... what kind of delusional, insane fucking lie are you whispering?!" she choked out, her voice cracked and frantic. "Have you completely lost your goddamn mind?!"

Cedric didn’t flinch, his booming, authoritative voice ringing through the room with absolutely zero fear of the apocalyptic consequences. "I am their biological father. I am the one whose blood is running through her veins. My brother Alexander married her, she took his name, and she lives in this palace publicly for one reason and one reason only because I couldn’t find a single goddamn way to rip up this cursed blood-contract binding me to your family without my grandfather killing us all. We used a fake marriage to shield her from the fallout!"

Isabella stumbled back another step in hysterical disbelief, nearly losing her footing entirely until her trembling fingers clawed at the wooden edge of the vanity behind her. She stared at Cedric with bulging, manic eyes, utterly paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of what she had just heard.

Her voice was thin, choked, and dripping with raw shock. "Alexander... Alexander actually knows about this living hell?! And he’s perfectly fine with your goddamn kids carrying his name?! The ruthless Alexander Volkov is willingly playing daddy to your bastards?!"

Cedric’s rugged features flattened into a chilling, cold-blooded mask. He took a massive step toward her, his towering frame casting a dark, suffocating shadow over her rigid body. When he spoke, it was a low hiss, as lethal and definitive as a razor blade. "Yeah, he knows about the twins. He’s known from the very fucking beginning. He stepped up to marry her because Grandfather demanded it to sweep the disaster under the rug and protect her from her father. He knows damn well those babies carry my blood. But..."

Cedric leaned down, his face inches from her pale, bloodless skin. His eyelids narrowed, his eyes dripping with pure, unadulterated death and venom. His voice dropped into a gravelly, lethal rasp. "But he thinks everything between us ended the exact second she signed that marriage contract. My brother thinks my relationship with her is a dead thing in the past. He doesn’t have a single fucking clue that I am still fucking her... or that her body still belongs to me and me alone, even after he put a ring on her finger!"

In those few seconds, my stomach did a violent, wrenching flip beneath my clothes, tearing at my insides. My mouth went completely dry as ash as Cedric’s words echoed through the room. I instinctively pressed my palm against my stomach, my breath escaping my chest in ragged, burning gasps. The entire game was balancing on a razor’s edge over a bottomless abyss. Alexander had agreed to be a shield for my babies, but if he ever found out that I was actively, continuously cheating on him with his younger brother after the wedding... he would slaughter every single living soul inside this palace.

He wouldn’t hesitate for a single goddamn second to put a bullet straight through the middle of his brother’s skull without a shred of mercy.

A sudden flash of terror mixed with a sick, pitch-black triumph ignited in Isabella’s eyes as she shot me a look of pure, unadulterated disgust. Her rigid lips trembled as she whispered, "So... you’re playing your older brother for a fucking fool! You’re sneaking around fucking his wife behind his back! That is pure, unadulterated filth!"