The Billionaire’s Notorious Villainess Stepmother Chapter 04
The Wine Cellar Punishment
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
The villa kept me awake. Wind hit the windows. Pipes knocked behind the walls.
At two a.m., I got up for water. Barefoot, I walked down the hall.
Sebastian’s room was at the end of the hall. I almost walked past it.
Then I heard the scuffling.
Muffled and frantic. The sound of bodies hitting furniture. A small cry, cut short.
I stopped.
A second voice. Older. A boy’s voice. Cruel and low.
“Give it to me. GIVE IT. Or I’ll cut it up right in front of her.”
My hand found the doorknob.
I didn’t knock.
The door swung open and I saw it all at once.
Tristan, Cassandra’s nine-year-old son, was sitting on Sebastian’s chest. One hand pinned Sebastian’s wrist to the floor.
The other held a pair of scissors, reaching toward Clara’s stuffed rabbit, the one thing she carried everywhere.
Clara stood in the corner, shaking, tears running silent down her face.
Sebastian’s face was bruised purple. His lip was split. But he wasn’t making a sound.
He lay there stiff, jaw locked, arms wrapped tight around the rabbit pressed to his chest.
He wasn’t fighting because he’d been taught that fighting back made things worse.
Tristan looked at me. He looked annoyed, not scared.
“Get out,” he said. “This isn’t your business.”
I crossed the room in three steps.
Grabbed Tristan by the back of his shirt.
Lifted him clean off Sebastian’s body.
He kicked and squirmed. “Let go of me! My mom’s gonna kill you!”
I dragged him out of the room, down the hallway, and to the basement door.
The wine cellar. Cold. Dark. Stone walls lined with bottles worth more than most people’s houses.
I shoved him inside and turned the lock.
He pounded on the door. “LET ME OUT! I’M TELLING MY MOM! YOU’RE DEAD!”
“Go ahead and yell,” I said through the door. “Nobody’s coming.”
I went back to Sebastian’s room.
He was sitting up now, shaking. Clara had crawled into his lap, clutching the rabbit with both hands.
Sebastian wiped his face fast, trying to hide the tears before I could mention them.
I sat on the floor beside them.
“How long?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Sebastian. How long has he been doing this?”
His voice came out cracked. “Since I was seven.”
Three years of this, and nobody had stopped it.
“Why didn’t you fight back?”
He looked down. “Aunt Cassandra said if I ever hurt Tristan, she’d tell my dad I was dangerous. She said he’d send me away. That I’d never see Clara again.”
My hands went cold.
That woman had used Clara to control him.
I leaned forward. “Sebastian. Look at me.”
He looked.
“Nobody in this house will ever use your sister against you again. You hear me? Nobody. If Tristan touches you, you fight back. You fight back with everything you have. And then you come find me.”
“But—”
“No. No buts. You are not a punching bag. You are Alistair Blackwood’s son. The only person in this house who gets to decide your future is you. Not Cassandra. Not her brat. You.”
He looked at me for a long time.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
I pulled Clara’s blanket around both of them. “Sleep. I’ll be right outside.”
I stood in the hallway for the next two hours, arms crossed, back against the wall.
At some point, Tristan stopped banging on the cellar door. The cold and the dark did their work.
Good.
Let him learn fear for one night.
By morning, Cassandra was pounding on my bedroom door.
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SON? HE WAS IN THE CELLAR ALL NIGHT! HE COULD HAVE FROZEN!”
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