All Chapters of Fated to my 4 bully Stepbrothers: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

~Zane~I'd been staring at the same three-second video clip of Valeria laughing for the past twenty minutes, and I was starting to think I'd officially lost my damn mind.It wasn't even a good video. Just something Lysander had posted on his story weeks ago, her cracking up at some stupid joke while we were all hanging out by the pool. But the way her eyes lit up, the way her whole face changed when she smiled... fuck, I could watch it on repeat forever.My phone buzzed with another notification. Instagram DM from some girl whose name I'd already forgotten, probably sending me another half-naked selfie with some lame spicy "hey hot stuff" as the caption. I didn't even bother opening it.Six months ago, I would've been all over that. Six months ago, my DMs were my hunting ground, my phone was basically a catalog of options, and I never spent more than a weekend thinking about the same girl twice.Now look at me. Sitting in my room like some lovesick idiot, watching the same video clip

~Valeria~I kept having the same weird dream, and it was starting to freak me out.Every night for the past week, I'd close my eyes and boom, there I was, standing in some forest I'd never seen before. And right in front of me was this huge castle.Not like the Disney kind with sparkly towers. This one looked old and serious, made of gray stone that seemed to go on forever. It sat right next to this perfect lake that was so blue it looked fake.But the weirdest part? There was always someone standing at the big front gate.A strange man. Tall, with dark hair. I couldn't see his face clearly, but he was always smiling at me. Not in a creepy way, more like he was happy to see me. Like he'd been waiting for me to show up.And every single time, I'd try to walk closer to him. I wanted to see who he was, wanted to know why he seemed so familiar. But my feet felt like they were stuck in mud. The harder I tried to move, the further away he seemed to get. Then I'd wake up.It was driving me

~Valeria~The photo felt like it was burning a hole in my backpack as I walked back to the library the next day.I'd spent the entire night staring at it, trying to convince myself I was imagining things. But every time I looked at that little girl's posture, the way she leaned into the man's protective touch, I knew it wasn't my imagination.The problem was, knowing something and proving it were two totally different things.Mrs. Henderson was working the front desk today instead of the usual student volunteers. She'd been the librarian here forever, probably since before I was born. If anyone would know where that photo came from, it would be her."Hi Mrs. Henderson," I said, trying to sound casual as I walked up to her desk."Valeria, dear. Back again today? You've been spending a lot of time here lately.""Just trying to keep my grades up," I lied. "Actually, I had a question about one of the books in the history section.""Of course. Which book?""The Dark Royals. I found a photo

~Valeria~I was having the kind of day where everything felt like it was going wrong, and then Michael appeared out of nowhere like he had some sort of sixth sense for my misery.Not that I was complaining. Much."Vanilla." His voice came from right behind me as I was trying to wrestle my locker open. The stupid thing had been sticking for weeks, and today it seemed determined to make my life even more difficult than it already was.I turned around, and there he was with that damn smirk that had a way of washing off my anger. "Michael." I gave my locker one last aggressive yank and it finally opened, nearly taking my arm off in the process. "What's up?" I added, breathing heavily. He leaned against the locker next to mine. "I should be asking you. Your eye bags haven’t reduced and you seem to have a lot going on.” His eyes darted back to my locker. Stressed was putting it mildly. Between trying to dig up information about my dad without getting murdered by my stepfamily, avoiding

~Valeria~I was pretty sure the guy with the newspaper was going to follow me home and suffocate me in my sleep.Okay, maybe that was too out of line, but he'd been sitting at the same table for three hours pretending to read about local boring drama while watching every move Michael and I made. And considering what we'd been researching, paranoia felt like a reasonable response."You're staring," Michael said without looking up from his laptop."He's staring first." I tried to focus on the documents spread across our table, but Newspaper Guy was making my skin crawl. "This is the third time this week someone's been weird about us being in the library.""Maybe we should take that as a sign we're onto something important."Important was one way to put it. Terrifying was another.Michael slid a photograph across the table. "Found something."I glanced around nervously before leaning forward. The man in the center of the group photo had my father's eyes. Same shape, same intense confiden