The Consortium Heir: My Stepsisters are obsessed with me

Chapter 1: The Delivery

There were exactly three things Anthony knew about Room 407: extra cheese, no peppers, and a forty-dollar tip promised by the voice on the phone.

He didn't know that the door was open. He didn't know that the hallway smelled like expensive perfume. And he definitely didn't know that in about four seconds, his entire life was going to catch fire.

"Delivery for 407," he called out, knocking on the open door out of habit. "Hello?"

No answer. Just sounds. Wet, rhythmic, breathless sounds.

He stepped closer, pizza box balanced on one palm, and looked in.

His brain took a full three seconds to process what his eyes were seeing. A king-sized bed. Tangled sheets. A man's back, broad and muscular, moving with slow, powerful thrusts. And beneath him—

No.

No, no, no.

Anthony had delivered hundreds of pizzas in his life — late nights, cheap apartments, luxury hotels, dorm rooms packed with loud college kids. He thought he'd seen everything a delivery job could throw at him.

He never expected to open a door and watch his entire world fall apart on the other side.

That's her hair. That long black hair he'd run his fingers through a hundred times, fanned out across white hotel pillows.

Those were the thick thighs he'd fallen asleep on more nights than he could count, locked tight around a stranger's waist. That was her voice, moaning the way she only ever moaned when—

The pizza box trembled in his hand as he stood frozen in the hallway, one hand gripping it, the other hanging useless at his side.

The room number matched. The name matched. But nothing about the scene inside matched what his brain was willing to accept.

For one desperate moment, he thought maybe he'd walked into the wrong room. Hotels all looked the same, right?

But then her hips lifted off the bed, greedy and shameless, meeting the man's every thrust, and she gasped out a name that wasn't his.

He heard her voice, the one he knew better than any sound in the world. The voice that had whispered promises under the stars, that had told him they'd stay together no matter what.

The warm box in his hands suddenly felt like it was burning straight through to his bones.

"Linda what the fuck?!" Anthony's voice cracked on the way out, loud enough to wake the dead.

The man didn't even flinch. He just glanced over his shoulder like he'd been interrupted mid-yawn, still buried inside her.

"Oh, shit. We left the door open." A lazy grin spread across his face. "And here comes the pizza delivery boy."

Linda's head whipped around. Her eyes went wide. Her face went from pleasure to pure, frozen panic in half a second.

"Holy shit—Anthony!" She scrambled for the sheet, pressing it against her chest, which was pointless. He'd already seen everything. He'd seen all of it.

"What… what are you doing here?"

The question hit him like a slap.

"What am I doing here?" The laugh that came out of Anthony didn't sound like his own. It came out broken and ugly.

"I'm working. I'm delivering the pizza you ordered." His eyes swept the room, then came back to her. "What I want to know is what you're doing here."

"Anthony, wait—" She scrambled for an explanation. "It's not what it looks like."

"It's not—" Anthony stared at her. At the hotel suite with its champagne bucket and rose petals. At the man still lying on top of her, completely unbothered, like this was all a fun little show.

"Really?" His voice shook. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like what it is."

The man finally sat back, completely naked and completely comfortable, like he owned the room. Maybe he did. His watch alone cost more than everything Anthony owned.

He wrapped an arm around Linda's waist and pulled her against him, marking his territory in front of everyone.

"Ah. So you're the boyfriend." He looked Anthony over like he was appraising a used car. "The one she's been telling me about."

Something in Anthony's chest cracked. "She's been telling you about me?"

The man shrugged. "Relax. You should be happy. Now you know the truth."

Something inside Anthony snapped, a clean, quiet break, like ice giving way.

He turned to Linda, the woman he'd spent years loving, the woman he'd given up everything for. He tried to speak but his voice cracked again as the burning sting of tears fought its way up his throat.

The man reached over, plucked the pizza box straight out of Anthony's hands, and tossed a wad of cash at his face. Bills scattered across the carpet like dead leaves.

"Take this and leave. We don't need your services anymore." Then he turned to Linda, all fake sweetness. "Unless you have something else to tell him, my love?"

Anthony looked at Linda one last time and her lips finally moved. "Anthony... can we talk about this later?"

Her audacity hit him like a fist to the chest. She was naked in another man's arms, in a room full of evidence, and she wanted to talk later.

"Nah…" Anthony chuckled, not because anything was funny, he just couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "There nothing for us to talk about ever again."

Her head snapped up. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"We're done, Linda."

"Like hell we are!" She shoved the sheet aside and stood up, suddenly forgetting she was naked.

His chest tightened. "Linda! You are literally cheating on me."

"And? You think being upset gives you some kind of power here?" Her eyes raked over him. "What makes you think you get to throw away someone like me?"

"Well that's unfortunate because I just did."

"You don't get to break up with me." She stomped toward him, jabbing a finger into his chest. "I'm the one who decides when this ends. I do the breaking up. And guess what? Now I'm telling you we're done!"

The logic was so insane it almost hurt worse than the cheating.

"You can't break up with me when we're not even dating anymore, because I just broke up with you."

"A broke, wretched nobody like you can't break up with me."

Unable to bear it anymore, Anthony turned and walked away without another word.

Her voice rose, cruel and sharp. "Don't you dare walk away from me!"

Anthony looked back at her one last time. The woman he'd worked double shifts for. The woman he'd skipped meals for so he could buy her birthday perfume.

He kept walking. Behind him he could hear laughter, her voice rising and cracking against the walls, but he didn't turn around. He couldn't.

"ANTHONY! YOU HEAR ME? YOU CAN'T—"

…

The air outside was heavy, the clouds gathering like a brewing storm. Anthony sank onto the curb in front of the hotel, staring blankly at the pavement, the neon lights flickering above him.

The rain started to fall, cool drops sliding down his face — but he wasn't sure if they were rain or unshed tears.

His hands clenched the fabric of his jeans, knuckles white. His chest ached like it was caving in, crushed beneath the weight of Linda's betrayal.

He loved her. God help him, he loved her with every fiber of his being.

Sure, she was high-maintenance and he was just a broke college kid delivering pizzas. But he worked extra shifts every week just to keep up with her lifestyle — the dinners, the gifts, the little things she "deserved."

She was his everything. And she'd thrown him away like he was nothing.

Anthony sat there for a long time, unmoving, as the rain grew heavier and hid his tears for him.

Then his phone buzzed. A message from the only other woman in his life.

{Tony, where are you? It's about to rain.}

His mother.

Anthony took a deep breath, wiped his face with the back of his hand, rose to his feet, and went home.

…

The trailer park was quiet when he got home, their small house looking older than usual under the storm clouds, a weak light flickering behind the window. He pushed the door open.

"Mom? I'm home."

She appeared almost instantly, moving toward him despite how frail she'd gotten lately, and pulled him into a hug before he could say anything else.

"I was starting to get worried." She coughed into her handkerchief.

Anthony's stomach clenched. Her illness was getting worse.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I was just…" He hesitated, swallowing hard.

She studied his face. "What happened?"

He looked away. She always knew.

"Anthony?"

He sighed. "Linda broke up with me."

She went quiet for a moment, then pulled him into another hug. "Oh, sweetheart."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." Her voice softened. "I know how much you loved her."

"Yes, I did." A painful smile crept onto his face. "I really did."

She rubbed his arm. "Come sit. I'll make you some hot cocoa. That ought to cheer you up." She turned toward the kitchen, coughing harder this time —

"Mom, no — you need to rest."

"Nonsense." She waved him off. "And after this, I'm calling that little miss to let her know that nobody breaks my Tony's heart and gets away with it."

He chuckled weakly. "Oh no. You will do no such thing."

"Why not?" she called from the kitchen.

"Because that would be embarrassing."

"For who?"

"The three of us."

She laughed, and for a second she sounded like herself again. "You're just like your father. Always thinking about everyone else before yourself. He'd be proud of the man you're becoming."

Anthony's smile faded as his eyes drifted to the family portrait on the wall — just him and his mother, taken when he was ten.

There was no father in the frame. There never had been.

Anthony never knew his father. According to Mom, they got separated while she was pregnant.

But she always spoke of him like he was the greatest man to ever live, the best man in the world, someone who could do no wrong. And for years, a small part of him never understood that.

If he was so perfect, where was he? Why had he left, and why had he never once come back?

Years ago those questions used to eat him alive. Now he'd mostly stopped asking. For all he knew, the man was long dead or had never existed at all.

It was him and his mom against the world, and that had always been enough.

That was the last calm thought he had. Because suddenly, the only sound he could hear in the trailer was the kettle screaming at boiling point.

"Mom?" he called out.

No response. His stomach dropped.

"MOM?" Louder this time.

Still nothing. He rushed into the kitchen and froze.

She was on the floor.

"Mom!" He dropped beside her, hands shaking as he checked for a pulse and got nothing.

Thunder cracked outside as he grabbed his phone, fingers trembling so badly he could barely unlock his phone.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"My mom. Please —" Anthony could barely get the words out. "You have to save my mom."

Anthony held his mother's hand as the ambulance sirens grew louder outside.

Somewhere across the city, a man who had spent years searching for a woman he'd never stopped loving had just found her — and with her, the son he never knew existed.