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CHAPTER 179: Step One: Complete

Author: Lady Sheldon
last update publish date: 2025-09-02 08:49:43

The next morning, I woke up to the faint creak of the door opening. I didn’t move right away. For a few seconds I just lay there, breathing slow, staring at the sunlight spilling across the floorboards.

The soft shuffle of feet gave it away—someone was in the room. The steps were light, careful, like they were trying not to wake me.

I turned my head and saw her. A girl. Young, maybe around my age, maybe older. Dressed in plain linen, hair braided neatly back, carrying a tray with food on it.
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  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 225: Yeah… It Was Time

    Everything moved pretty fucking fast after that night—like someone had hit fast-forward on the worst parts of our lives and forgotten to give us the remote. One minute we were all sitting in the living room bleeding out our secrets, the next the house was full of cardboard boxes, packing tape screeching across seams, and the kind of quiet conversations that happen when nobody really wants to be heard. Mom threw herself into organizing like it was therapy, labeling shit with Sharpie in that neat handwriting she always used for grocery lists: “Kitchen—pots & pans,” “Fragile—photo albums.” While Jake wandered around hauling boxes to the garage for the moving truck that would show up in three days. Dad mostly stayed in his study with the door closed, the faint clink of a bottle against glass the only proof he was still breathing in there.And the morning they left? The sky was that flat gray that made everything look washed out and tired. The moving truck idled in the driveway, exhaus

  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 224: Staring At Nothing Yet Feeling Everything

    The words landed like a brick through glass. My mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Just air. Just the sudden, hollow rush of understanding why the house had felt wrong for months, why Dad had been sleeping on the couch more nights than in their bed, why Mom’s smiles never reached her eyes anymore.“You’re… what?” My voice cracked on the last word, sounding younger than I’d sounded in years.“We’ve been trying to figure it out,” Mom continued, words tumbling faster now like she needed to get them out before she lost her nerve. “We’ve been in counseling for almost a year. We thought we could fix it, that we could wait until you graduated, until things settled down. But after Camila… after everything… it just became clear we can’t keep pretending. We’re hurting each other more by staying together. And we’re hurting you kids by dragging it out.”Counseling for a year??!I could stop the ugly bark of laughter that slipped from my mouth.“You’ve been in counseling for a year? A

  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 223: What The Fuck Is That Look?

    I stared into the steam rising from my tea, watching it curl and dissolve, trying to force my brain to focus on something normal. “Tessa, can you hear me?” Mom’s voice cut through the fog, soft but insistent, the way she spoke when she was trying not to startle me. I blinked hard, tea sloshing against the rim of the mug. “What?” I asked, startled enough that my shoulders jerked. “What did you say?” She was sitting on the armchair across from me, knees pressed together, hands clasped so tight her knuckles were white. Jake hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed, looking like he wanted to disappear into the wallpaper. Mom took a careful breath. “What do you think about us moving? After your final exams.” Moving out? I felt my whole body go rigid, mug trembling in my hands until hot tea splashed over the edge and burned my thumb. I set it down on the coffee table a little too fast and the liquid pooled around the base. “What?!” “It’s a nice place, I promise,” sh

  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 222: On Me

    I spun so fast my hood fell back, snow flying off like confetti as my heart slammed against my ribs. I was ready to swing and scream… until I saw his face. Jake. Breathless, cheeks flushed from running, hair sticking up in wet spikes under his beanie. “Jesus, Tess, where the hell have you been?” His voice cracked on the last word, lower than usual, rough from shouting or cold or both. He didn’t let go right away, fingers tight around my sleeve like he was afraid I’d vanish if he did. “I’ve been driving around for an hour looking for you. Mom’s losing her mind.” I yanked my arm free, the sudden motion making my shoulder twinge. I rubbed the spot where his grip had been, more out of habit than pain, and let out a long, shaky sigh that fogged the air between us. “I’m fine,” I muttered, even though the words tasted like a lie. “I just… needed to walk.” “You needed to walk for three fucking hours? In a snowstorm? Without answering your phone?” He ran a hand through his hair, snowflak

  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 221: Fuck You!

    “She’d look over her shoulder when we were walking home from school,” I went on, voice cracking a little. “Like she expected someone to be following us. Wouldn’t tell me what. Said she couldn’t. That it was better if I didn’t know. I pushed, Miles. I pushed so fucking hard, but she just hugged me and said, ‘I dont want to drag you into this. You don’t understand how messy it is.’ I thought she was being dramatic.”My hands were shaking now, not just from the cold.I pressed them against my thighs to stop it. “And then she was gone. Her, her mom, her dad, Ethan. The house empty like they’d never lived there. And yet the police act like it’s a cold case already. Like four people don’t matter enough to keep looking.”I finally turned my head toward him to find his face pale under the hood, glasses catching the faint orange from the distant streetlight. He looked… wrong. Frozen. Like I’d just dropped something heavy on him and he didn’t know how to pick it up.“When did she go missing?

  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 220: She Sounded… Off

    The figure stopped dead, like a deer caught in headlights. Then a voice, cracking a little on the edges, floated over the snow.“Shit—sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He took a half-step back, palms up in that universal I’m-harmless gesture. “I thought nobody came out here anymore. Especially not… uh… alone. At night. In January.”I squinted through the falling snow, trying to make him out. Skinny. Tallish but slouched like he was trying to disappear into his own shoulders with big square glasses that reflected the faint light. Messy dark hair sticking out from under the hood and a backpack slung over one shoulder, straps worn thin. Definitely not one of the usual suspects who haunted this place. He looked like he belonged in a library, not on abandoned train tracks.Still, I didn’t relax. “What the hell are you doing here then?” I snapped. “You following me or something?”“No! God, no.” He shook his head fast, snow flying off the brim of his hood. “I come here sometimes.

  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 85: MY KIND OF LOVE!

    I landed soft as a shadow, my boots barely disturbing the grass. The balcony vanished behind me as I slipped around the side of the house. The mansion loomed quiet and dark like it always did, like it was holding its breath while I snuck in like the twisted little monster I was pretending not to

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-24
  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 89: Good Riddance

    CAMILA ~ The next morning, I dragged myself back to my room after a very awkward breakfast where I tried not to think too hard about the fact that I was wearing Ethan’s shirt. Or that my mom was suspiciously glowing like someone who hadn’t just been mourning the death of her dignity last nig

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-24
  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 92: Watching

    By the time the flames died down, the sky had turned an orange kind of gold. The kind that looked soft but felt like the day was ending with more questions than answers. The burnt clothes lay in the pit, crumbling into nothing. The smell of smoke clung to my skin and hair, and even though I didn’

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-24
  • Claimed By My Stepbrother    CHAPTER 93: The Wedding

    The days passed in a weird, foggy blur. Like I blinked and time just… slipped between my fingers. Everything felt distant. Like I was watching life through a thick sheet of glass—aware, but not really there. Detached in the kind of way that sneaks up on you and settles heavy on your chest when yo

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-24
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