The Consortium Heir: My Stepsisters are obsessed with me

Chapter 8: The Stark Sisters

Both Anthony and Sonia turned toward the voice at the same time.

Standing at the entrance was the sister with blue hair. The same one who had rolled her eyes at him like he was an inconvenience earlier that afternoon.

Anthony had not expected to see her again so soon, and he was even less prepared for what came next.

Sonia didn't even flinch. She turned to Anthony with a bright, easy smile, and the calm of someone who had already decided how this was going to go.

"Anthony, let me introduce you to my fun police twin sister, Mia."

Anthony blinked. "Twin?"

"Yeah. You can't tell, right?"

He looked between them. They had the same face, same eyes, same sharp jawline. The only obvious difference was their hair, Sonia's strawberry pink and Mia's deep blue, both colors that had become part of their identities.

Mia did not acknowledge him. Her gaze went straight to Sonia, looking at her sister like she wanted to strangle her with her own swimsuit strap.

"Answer me, Sonia!" Mia's voice cracked across the room like a whip. "What do you think you're doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm having fun.” Sonia tilted her head towards Anthony with a smirk. “We're having fun."

"This is not a joke Sonia!!”

"I never said it was. Now are you going to join us, or are you going to stand there being boring all night?"

The strange thing was where she was looking while she said it. Not at her sister but at Anthony. Like Mia’s presence barely interested her, and he was the only thing in the room worth her attention.

Anthony, for his part, had quietly slid back until his shoulders touched the pool wall. The water was doing important diplomatic work covering his lower half, and he had no plans to end that arrangement.

Mia took a step closer to the pool. "Does he know?"

The question landed differently than anything else she had said.

Sonia froze. Just for a second. A tiny hitch, like a record skipping. Then her smile came back, smooth as ever. "Can we talk about this some other time?"

"I knew it. Of course he doesn’t" Mia crossed her arms.

"No idea about what?" Anthony said.

Neither of them answered. So, Anthony watched in silence. The energy in the room had changed the moment Mia walked in.

Whatever ease had existed between him and Sonia was gone, and in its place was something older, something with weight to it. A tension that had clearly been building long before today.

Mia looked at Anthony for the first time since entering with so much contempt.

“And he's too clueless to figure out why a billionaire's daughter he met a few hours ago is throwing herself at him this hard."

Sonia let out a slow breath. "I see you're intent on having this conversation now."

She pushed away from him and rose out of the pool, water streaming off her shoulders and down the black fabric, completely unbothered by the show.

She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. "So why don't we have it somewhere else?"

"No." Mia planted her feet. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell you think you were doing!"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sonia snapped the towel tighter, and her voice changed. "I'm securing our future. That's what."

‘Securing our what now?’ Anthony thought to himself as he looked between them. He had the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that he had walked into the middle of a conversation that had started years before he existed.

"Securing our future?" Mia repeated the words like they tasted rotten. "We don't even know if he's actually the biological son!"

"Neither do we know that he isn’t." Sonia shot back.

"So that's the plan.” Mia's voice carried something close to disbelief.  “You're going to gamble everything on the possibility that he might be the heir."

"You bet I am," she answered with no hesitation or apology, "because we sure don't have many other options."

Anthony turned the words over in his head and still found nothing that made sense to him.

"There has to be a better way," Mia said. "Father trained us better than this."

"Well, he's not really our father now, is he?" Sonia's composure cracked.

Mia flinched like she'd been slapped.

"Don't even get me started on Mom," Sonia went on, her words coming faster, sharper, "because we both know she didn't raise us for shit!"

The room went quiet.

Anthony watched Mia's face change. He expected another argument. But what he saw instead was pain. The same pain that had just slipped into Sonia's voice, raw and ugly.

"I understand that you're hurting," Mia said finally. “But this? This is just insanity."

"So has our entire life!" Sonia's voice rose, then cut clean. "So, you either get off your high horse and join me, or get the hell out of my way!"

"Over my dead body will I be caught with that wretched leech!" Mia jabbed a finger straight at Anthony.

Anthony pointed at himself. Me? What did I do?

"This isn't about him," Sonia said flatly. "This is about our future in this family."

Silence settled between them like something heavy had been set down.

Anthony had stayed quiet long enough.

"Okay, seriously." Anthony finally worked up the courage, pushing off the wall. "Can someone please explain what the hell is actually going on?"

Both sisters turned to him at the same time and answered at once.

"Shut up!!"

Anthony closed his mouth.

The difference between them even in that was striking. Mia's voice was cold and distant. Sonia's was sharper, edged with something that sounded almost like frustration.

As though, his confusion was an inconvenience she didn't have room for right now.

He looked at her. The same Sonia who had smiled at him all afternoon, bought him a wardrobe, and whispered in his ear in this very pool.

Everything he knew about her, which honestly wasn't much, began to look like a mask with something bleeding through the cracks.

He had no idea who Sonia Stark actually was. And that bothered him more than it probably should have.

The sisters went on glaring at each other, and a heavy silence settled over the pool room. Even the water seemed to hold still around Anthony.

Then the door opened.

All three of them turned.

Sophie stood in the entrance, with a tablet held against her chest like a shield.

She didn't even blink at the scene. The shouting sisters and half-naked brother in the pool. Nothing.

Mia and Sonia stormed out in opposite directions, without another word. But it was clear that whatever this was remained far from finished.

"Thank goodness." Anthony let out a slow breath “The drama over."

Then Sophie looked down to him, uttered the last words he was expecting to hear.

"Anthony Hudson, Mr. Stark summons for you in his study."