Switching Targets: The Uncle's Obsession

I chased him for three years. Tonight I walked in on him kissing another girl his birthday gift still going warm in my hands.

So I texted the one who'd been with me the whole time. My System. Two words: *switch targets.*

Except my System was never an app in my phone. He was a real man. And he'd been waiting three years for me to finally say it.

That night I ended up red to the ears, hiding under the covers, voice shaking. "What what do we do now?"

He raised an eyebrow, lazy as anything. "Nothing to figure out. I'll be the male lead."

CHAPTER 1

I pushed the door open, and Chase was kissing another girl.

The cheering cut off the second the door swung wide. Every eye in the room slid to me then past me, like I wasn't there.

His mouth curved, half a smile, that careless thing he always wore. My heart still stuttered. I hate that it still stuttered.

The red velvet box in my hands was slick with cold sweat, sticking to my fingers. Three years of me were in that box.

For one second, I wanted to run.

The girl spoke first. Soft, wounded, an apology already loaded. "Sis I'm sorry. Chase lost a dare, I shouldn't have"

Amelie. I'd seen her once, in a group photo. The Merricks had sponsored her for years. She'd just flown back from overseas.

So tonight wasn't only Chase's birthday. It was a homecoming for his golden girl. No wonder they'd gone all out.

I made myself breathe. "Oh," I said. It came out shaking.

Chase didn't like that. He frowned, and cold fingers closed around my wrist. "Cadence. Don't make a scene. It's just a game."

I wasn't making a scene. What right did I have to make a scene?

Three years I chased this man. He never once called me his girlfriend. Not out loud. Not to anyone.

I pulled my wrist free, found a corner, sat down, and messaged the pinned contact at the top of my phone.

*System. I want to switch targets.*

CHAPTER 2

Here's the short version.

I died almost. Car accident. The day after, I woke up inside a game.

Everyone else got some sleek voice in their head. Mine was a contact in my phone. A chat thread. That was the whole System.

I doubted it, at first. Then it rattled off my favorite foods, my worst habits, every private thing I'd never told a soul and I believed.

The rules were simple. Pick a target. Win him. Clear the world.

I picked Chase myself.

One ordinary afternoon I looked up, and there he was jacket slung over one shoulder, strolling the riverfront like the sunlight had been poured out for him. Something in my chest went warm.

I took a photo. Sent it. *Him.*

Ten minutes later, one word came back. *Okay.*

After that, I chased Chase Merrick for three years.

The System fed me everything about him, until I knew him inside out. The night his car went off the bend and into the river, I was the first one in the water. I dragged him out. Then I sat by his bed three days straight, burning with fever.

It worked. I made it to his side.

And my System didn't say a word to me for two weeks.

Two weeks. Then, finally, one message. *Too reckless. That's the last time.*

Worried about his numbers, probably.

After that, Chase and I got close. We held each other, kissed, did all the things two people do. Maybe he loved me. Maybe not only me.

I told myself, like an idiot, that one day it would all come good.

Then tonight I watched him kiss Amelie, and I finally got it: when you kiss someone you actually want, your hands shake. Just a little.

I'd never once seen his hands shake for me.

Fine. I was done.

A long pause. Then the System sent one word. *Address.*

I didn't know what he meant to do with it. But I trusted him. I sent it, and turned off the screen.

The second it went dark, Chase was standing in front of me.

He nodded at the box in my hands, voice low. "My birthday present?"

Brows drawn, those light-brown eyes a tempting kind of dark in the low light. For Chase, this counted as an apology.

The whole room held its breath, waiting for me to hand it over like a good girl.

My gifts to Chase were never the most expensive. Just the most thought-out.

That limited-edition signed jersey? I drank myself to a bleeding stomach at his business dinners and torched three of my own deals to get it.

He went through a tea phase once. I flew out and bought an entire private estate's harvest a year of my life, a small fortune for one tin of the freshest leaf.

When he finally tried it, all he said was, "Not bad."

Not bad. The highest praise I ever earned from Chase Merrick.

I looked up. I smiled. And in front of every single person there, I tossed the box out the window.

"Sorry," I said. "Forgot to bring one."

Chase stared at the empty window like the sight wouldn't compute, jaw clenched. "Cadence, you"

He wrenched his tie loose, ready to have it out with me. Beside him, Amelie's knees buckled and she folded neatly into his arms.

The room went strange and still.

And then the door opened again.

The address. I'd sent it minutes ago, not knowing what for and the instant that door moved, some part of me knew this was the answer.

A man stood in the dim light, in a suit worth more than everything else in the room combined, a seven-figure watch throwing gold. He didn't spare the staring crowd a glance. He crossed the floor in a few long strides and took my hand.

"Why are you so cold?"

Every eye in the room snapped to me.

Me?

Chase shoved Amelie off him and stabbed a finger at the man beside me, livid. "Thorne get your hand off her. Now."

The man only laced his fingers tighter through mine and told Chase, almost pleasantly, "Sorry. My girlfriend likes it."

Then, quieter, with something under it that made the room go colder: "She's mine now, Chase. You had three years. You wasted every one of them."

He said it like a verdict. And me I didn't correct him.

I'd never seen Chase like this. The champagne tower on the table shattered all at once.

The instant the glass fell, Thorne pulled me flush against him solid, certain, like he'd done it a hundred times.

Through his jacket, I heard Amelie scream and go down. When the dust settled, her hair was mussed, one bare calf nicked and bleeding from the shards.

"Chase don't. Please. You're scaring me."

The golden girl's little catch of breath brought some of him back. But Chase didn't look at her. Not once. His eyes stayed locked on me and on Thorne.

It made my skin crawl.

Because Chase Merrick is a genuine, certified menace. Corner him, and there's no telling what he'll do.

CHAPTER 3

Thorne was unhurried, long fingers plucking a shard of glass from my hair.

"Thorne let go of her. Do you hear me?" It still wasn't enough for Chase; even with people holding him back, he kicked the sofa, hard.

I hadn't seen it coming, and I flinched in Thorne's arms.

Thorne's expression changed in a blink. One cold look cut across the room.

"Chase. I've been generous with you. Haven't I."

The temperature in the room dropped to zero. The people holding Chase back scattered like startled birds.

God. He was unfairly hot.

"By blood, I'm your uncle." A beat. "And who runs this family whose name ends up on the holding is still my call."

The System had told me some of the family history. Thorne holds the controlling stake in the empire; he's the heir the whole thing answers to. Chase's side broke away years ago to build their own branch, and the two lines have been at war over control ever since.

Thorne. It clicked I'd seen him twice before. Once at a business dinner, where a few quiet words from him sent the big shot across the table fleeing white-faced. Once the night I kissed Chase he showed his face for a second, then was gone.

Both times, he'd been there. In the edges. Watching over me.

But why would the System send *him*?

Under Thorne's presence, Chase didn't dare move. After a long moment he forced his chin up at me. "But Cadence is my girlfriend. Uncle or not, this isn't right."

Thorne wasn't the least bit annoyed. He turned back to me, intrigued. "He says you're his girlfriend."

Three years I chased Chase. Countless nights, on empty streets, I'd asked him: *Chase what are we?* All I ever got back was the howl of the wind and a drunk kiss.

Three years I waited for that answer. Now that he'd finally said it out loud, there wasn't a single ripple in me.

I looked, calm, at Chase half-kneeling on the floor. "No. I'm his dad."

Chase's chest heaved. He was gathering himself to come at me and Amelie beat him to it.

"Sis, how could you carry on with Chase's own uncle behind his back?"

Cute. Tangled up with Chase, and still climbing onto the moral high ground to lecture me.

Before I could do a thing, Thorne flung his glass-flecked jacket over Chase and gave Amelie one flat glance.

"If you want to die, just say so."

Whatever color was left drained out of Amelie's face. The words died in her throat, and she shrank half a step back, behind Chase.

Satisfying.

Show's over. I picked up my bag to go and found a downpour hammering outside.

I glanced back at Thorne. He was the System's man, after all. He wouldn't leave me stranded.

He didn't. He handled it thoroughly. He simply made Chase set us up a room upstairs.

Directly across from Chase's bedroom.

"Cadence. I need to talk to you."

The second Thorne stepped inside, Chase found the nerve to grab my wrist. Brows knit, those lovesick eyes fixed on me.

"Cadence did you bring my uncle here just to make me jealous?"

CHAPTER 4

"Just apologize," Chase said, "and I'll pretend today never happened."

"..."

I felt like I'd swallowed a fly. I'd barely pulled my hand back when a shadow pressed in behind me.

"Chase. It's late. Don't make me hit you."

And with that, he pulled me into the bedroom.

Amazing. The System sent me a man who talks like *that*?

Thorne is a savage in a suit, and he curses like it's a craft.

The kind of man who should have someone on their knees calling him *daddy*.

The System really came through for me.

Back in the room, Thorne stood wrapped in a towel, drying his hair, water sliding down the wet strands and vanishing into the terrycloth.

Three years. Three whole years. Why did I spend every one of them orbiting Chase?

But there was no time to ogle. I still had questions.

"You... are you the rescue the System sent?"

Thorne paused. His voice dropped, low and warm. "You could say that."

Confirmation. I stepped up behind him.

"Did you meet it? What are its specs?"

The System and I only ever talked by text. I'd always half-suspected it was a bot one of those clunky old desktops, slow, types two words a minute. I'd always been curious.

Thorne's brows drew together. The tips of his ears went faintly red. "Six-two. Twenty-six."

Huh. Kind of unbalanced.

I shook my head, unimpressed. "Mediocre."

The bot really did have mediocre taste.

Thorne's face dropped in an instant. "You've *tried* it?"

I'd been chatting with the System for three years of course I'd tried it. It was slow and glitchy.

"Yeah," I said. "Not great."

Thorne tossed the towel aside and leaned in, slow closing a distance he looked like he'd been waiting years to close. Like he already knew something I didn't.

"Then why don't I know about that... my Goddess