The Price Of Control

They call him a villain. I call him stepbrother. My life was a pastel dream of university lectures and family inheritance—until my mother married Nikolai Volkov, a man whose wealth is shadowed by a dangerous, unseen empire. Overnight, I, Anya Petrova, am pulled into a world of cold luxury and deadly secrets. Then I meet him: Dimitri Volkov. My new stepbrother is a weapon in an Italian suit. Calculating, precise, and possessing sapphire eyes that hold the chilling emptiness of a man who has traded his soul for power. He doesn’t want me; he wants the assets my father left behind. He sees me as a pawn in his long-game plan for vengeance against his own father. I should run. I should scream his secrets to the world. But Dima’s control is a gilded cage I find myself leaning into, and his ruthlessness mirrors the desperate loneliness in my own heart. He pushes boundaries until our quiet hostility combusts into a desperate, forbidden affair. When the line between vengeance and obsession blurs, I discover a dangerous truth: Dima is not just planning his father's destruction—he's planning to claim the asset, the empire, and me, as his ultimate spoils. In the dark game of forbidden desire, the price of control is absolute. And I am about to pay it.