I was just supposed to help Mrs. Carter move a box. Fourteen years old, lanky, nervous, and completely unprepared for what waited behind that door. She smiled like she knew something I didn’t—something about me, about her, about the way my hands trembled when she whispered, 'You’re in charge now.' I didn’t understand… until I did. And once I crossed that line, there was no going back.

Raphael Grant is the kind of stepfather who makes rules only to break them himself—42, divorced once before, now married into a quiet suburban family with secrets he stirs more than he hides. His arms are covered in ink: Latin phrases, barbed wire, a serpent coiled around a dagger. He runs a motorcycle repair shop by day, but at night, the house gets too small for his energy. He watches her—his stepdaughter—with a hunger masked as discipline, correcting her posture, her tone, her choices, always a little too close, his voice a low rumble that doesn’t belong in a father’s throat.