Bullied By My Alpha Stepbrother novel Chapter 48

Chapter 49 – Jasmine

Hardin

It was a struggle to not scream at Jasmine as I brought her back home, Lorenzo trailing after us.

When we arrived at the house, Lorenzo held her arm and she stopped, still shaken from almost being kidnapped, it made my anger towards her lessen a bit because it would have been insane if she had not been shaken after what had just happened.

“Do you want me to stay?” He asked and I scoffed, fighting the urge to slap his hand away from her arm and resisting the stronger urge that I had to hold him by the neck and ask him questions about what they were doing and why he had put her in harm’s way even though I was sure that he had nothing to do with the kidnappers, considering how he had fought them off until I got there.

I could not even begin to imagine what would have happened if I had gotten there a minute later than I have.

When I saw the look on Jasmine’s face as I slapped Lorenzo’s hand away, I decided that perhaps I needed to tone down my anger. She was still terrified and didn’t need me to create another scene right now.

“I’ll take it from here.” I said to Lorenzo, raising my eyebrows and daring him to try to counter my decision.

We engaged in a staring match for a while, his lips tightening into a thin line before he relaxed his features and looked back at her with a small smile.

“I’ll call you, okay?” He said to her and when she nodded and turned around, I looked at him.

“We will have to talk too.” And when he nodded, I knew that he understood how serious the matter was. How we needed to put aside our differences because this wasn’t about us.

No, this was by far bigger than the two of us.

Someone had tried to kidnap Jasmine.

And coming right after the fact that someone had shot an arrow at her few weeks ago and we had not even been able to find the culprit, I was even more agitated than before.

It was easy to fight your enemy when you knew who your enemy was.

But now we know nothing.

We were practically fighting blind.

Entering the house and walking up the stairs, I followed Jasmine into her room in silence and she didn’t even have the strength to turn around and ask why I was entering her room, like she usually did whenever I did.

I guessed she believed that I could see that she was not in any frame of mind for my games today.

And she was right. The last thing I wanted to do right now was taunt her. Or try to harass her.

It was an unfamiliar feeling, but what was even more strange was the urge that I had to make sure that she was safe. It was not even foreign to me, which I suppose made it worse that despite how much Jasmine made my blood boil, the only person that could bully her had to be me. No one else.

Kidnapping her? Trying to kill her?

Not on my watch.

Sitting on the bed, I watched as she took some clothes from her wardrobe and headed into the shower, locking the door to the bathroom after her.

Under normal circumstances, I would have probably had something to say about that, especially because we had seen enough of each other without clothes for her to still be shy around me. But I guessed that was who she was.

She wasn’t like the others who didn’t even need more than a glance before they were stripping in front of me. No, Jasmine didn’t give a fuck who I was.

Silently, I relaxed into the couch and we looked at each other in silence until her eyes started to flutter shut.

It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep thankfully, because it meant that she would not notice when I sat beside her on the bed and removed a loose strand of hair from her face. It meant that she would not notice how I stared at her with longing that I should not be having for my step sister.

Stepping out of her bedroom, I closed the door gently and was about to head to my bedroom, not interested in going downstairs for dinner tonight because I knew that my father would grill me until I was about to lose my mind about the investigation into this case, because if he hadn’t heard about it now, he would by dinner.

Bringing out my phone to call Lorenzo as I held the door knob to my bedroom, I saw that my aunt had called me earlier and I closed the door to my bedroom and headed down the hallway to her room.

Knocking once, I entered and watched as she scrambled to end the call as she saw who had entered.

Rising to her feet, she gave me an awkward smile like she had been caught doing something suspicious.

“Hello, aunt.”

“My favorite and only nephew. What brings you here? You could have knocked.” She answered breathing, and it made my brows raise in suspicion.

She had been making a lot of phone calls lately and the worst part was that she was being awfully secretive about it which meant that it might be serious. I wondered if it had anything to do with Jasmine and her mother. If she was already planning to be mean to them again and I shook my head, deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“I did knock. You called me earlier today, that’s why I came.” I told her and she nodded, her smile very cryptic.

“Perhaps another time we can discuss about that. It was not urgent.” She replied and even though everything didn’t look out of place in her bedroom, I suspected that she was hiding something.

“Are you sure?” I asked and she led me towards the door herself, gently rising on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek as she waved me off, and when she closed the door and I turned around to head to my room, I added her weird behavior to the list of problems that I needed to solve.

And if there was something about me that I appreciated, it was my ability to always find answers. And I was going to do just that .