Sinful Desires Craving My Stepbrothers Touch

Julienne

The cold chill of the air seeped in through my jacket, but I refused to move or look away. 

Tears stung my eyes but I fought them back, watching the men lower his casket into the ground. Amidst the sea of funeral operators, I was the only one present he could call family.

Soon enough, there would be a headstone there with his name on it;

Luciano Medici.

Grief washed over me. The pain was suffocating, making it hard for me to breathe. It took everything in me to not keel over. He was gone. The man who despite meeting him only a short time ago, was more of a father to me than anyone else was dead. 

I'd never had a good life since I was younger and it was no thanks to my mother who had always been a golddigger, flitting from one man to the next. As I grew older, many of them kept their eyes on me, leading me to have to ward off their advances. Some of them were worse than others, but my mother had never batted an eye.

Instead, she always acted like I was competition and not her daughter. She would mock my appearance, belittle me and do anything to bring me down. I had to work for everything I got and even then she'd made it difficult.

That was my life. But all of that changed when she married Luciano Medici a year ago.

At first, I thought he would be like all the others, trying to harass me or treat me like dirt. But Mr. Medici was different. He was kind, gentle, and loving. 

Despite meeting him later in life, he had been more of a parent to me than my own mother ever was.

He treated me like the daughter he never had, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was experiencing a childhood I had always missed out on.

He would defend me against my mom's cruelty, and for once, I felt like I had someone in my corner. His presence had brought a sense of peace and stability into my life.

And now...he was gone.

For the first time since the ceremony, a tear slipped out of my eyes. How could he be dead when I had just seen him, spoken to him days before?

Keeping an all nighter at work, I had gotten several messages from him, only days before. I had called him and heard his voice, wishing him goodnight.

I didn't expect that the next day, I would come home to find my mother at the entrance, telling me that he had died of cardiac arrest. 

I couldn't believe it. How could this have happened when he seemed fine hours before? He was healthy.

But another part of me knew that life was unpredictable, and sometimes, tragedy struck without warning. 

Now, I was left to pick up the pieces, mourning the loss of the only person who had ever truly cared about me.

Hours passed in a blur as I trudged through the motions of the funeral service. Now, as I reached into the mansion, the silence enveloped me. My mother was nowhere in sight and I fought back the bitterness. Of course she hadn't cared for him, like I did.

My footsteps echoed as I made my way to my room. Memories from a year ago haunted me now as I stepped into it. I could recall when my mother and I had entered the mansion shortly after their wedding.

I remembered the first time I saw this room, how surprised I was by its beauty, from the wide spaces to the comforting dark mahogany splayed through the place. It was a far cry from the cramped, dingy spaces I'd shared with my mom and her various boyfriends.

And then he told me that this was mine, shocking me to the core.

I had never been offered a room. Even the more wealthy boyfriends my mother took in hadn't hesitated to relegate me to a basement.

I was reluctant to accept it then, yet now it was a space that had become my sanctuary, a home.

In less than a year he had become my home. Luciano Medici had given me a sense of security, of belonging, and now...he was gone.