My Wife Longed for My Foster Brother Chapter 02

My Wife Longed for My Foster Brother Chapter 02 Always His Side
Cassandra’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Derek… please don’t talk to me like that. It hurts.”
Derek shrugged, like he couldn’t have cared less. “Then go cry to August about it. What’s the matter—he can’t satisfy you, so you’re coming back to me?”
Cassandra swayed on her feet, looking like she might shatter into pieces right there on the sidewalk.
I couldn’t stand watching her be humiliated like that. I stepped forward, reached out to pull her away—and Derek’s fist slammed into my face without warning.
“August,” he said, grinding his foot down on my hand so I couldn’t get up, “what’s the rush to stake your claim in front of me?”
“You stole my inheritance. You slept with my woman. You’ve been living pretty large, haven’t you?”
I spat out a mouthful of blood and swung back at him.
Cassandra stepped between us.
“Don’t you dare touch him.”
“He hit me first,” I said.
“Because you touched me in front of him. What did you think was going to happen?”
“And besides—if it weren’t for you, Derek and I would have been together a long time ago. You owe him so much. What’s one punch?”
I had known for years that she favored Derek over me. I had watched it happen day after day, month after month. But seeing her stand between us like I was the enemy—seeing her shield him with her own body and face me with those cold, accusing eyes—it still carved a fresh wound into my chest.
In her heart, I was never supposed to exist in the first place.
A few years ago, the Sterling family had found me—their real son, the one they’d lost. Derek, who had spent his entire life believing he was the heir, had fallen from grace overnight. He went from being the only son of the Sterling family to a fraud, a fake.
The Sterling and Vance families had a long-standing agreement about a marriage alliance. Cassandra’s father had never liked Derek, and now he had the perfect excuse to refuse the match.
I expected Cassandra to fight it, to throw a fit, to refuse. Instead, she came to me on her own.
“I’ll marry you,” she said. “But the general manager position at the Kingsport headquarters has to go to Derek.”
I was overjoyed. I didn’t care who held power in the company. I was just grateful that I’d finally have the chance to be by her side.
But in the three years that followed, the words she said to me most often were:
“Why did the Sterling family have to drag you back from that shithole mountain village?”
“You were already used to living like that anyway. So what if you’d stayed there your whole life?”
“But Derek is different. He lived as a wealthy young master for more than ten years, and then suddenly he found out he wasn’t really a Sterling at all. Do you have any idea how horrible that must have felt for him?”
Every one of those words was like a knife twisting in my chest.
I stood there frozen, unable to move. She frowned at me.
“August, I told you before. If you behave yourself, I’ll consider giving you a child someday. But if you insist on competing with Derek today, I promise you this—you will never have a child as long as you live.”
I looked at her—so certain of her own righteousness—and gave her a bitter smile. I lowered the hand I’d raised and started walking away.
A fist slammed into the back of my head.
“August,” Derek said, his voice light and almost cheerful, “Cass is right. You owe me way too much. One punch could never be enough.”