All Chapters of The stepbrother I ran from is my new professor.: Chapter 81 - Chapter 85

Chapter Seventy-Nine — Footage⚔Micaiah's POV⚔I knew something was wrong before she said a word.Maliya had been quiet the whole drive, which wasn't unusual. But there's a difference between someone who has nothing to say and someone who's sitting on something they haven't decided what to do with yet. She was watching the road the whole time with her phone face down in her lap and her jaw set in that particular way that meant her brain was working faster than she was letting on.I parked and she got out before I cut the engine.I let her go.First class was mine. I stood at the front of the room and taught and watched her in the third row not look at me, which was its own kind of looking. She took notes. Asked one question that was sharper than anything anyone else in the room had offered all morning. Two students near the back were visibly surprised she'd said anything at all.I called on her once near the end just to see what she'd do.She answered without hesitating and then went

Chapter Eighty-One — Brother⚔Micaiah's POV⚔I hadn't said that name out loud in two years.Maliya was staring at me with her phone still extended between us and I was looking at the paused footage and trying to decide how much of what just came out of my mouth I could take back. The answer was none of it. It was already out there, sitting in the hallway between us, too big to step around.I took the phone from her hand and watched the footage from the beginning.Forty seconds. Kieran and Marcus standing between two cars, close enough that whatever they were saying wasn't meant to travel. Marcus had his back mostly to the camera but I knew his posture the same way you know anyone you grew up watching. The way he held his shoulders. The way he turned his head when he was making a point he wanted to land.I'd spent twenty years knowing that posture.I handed the phone back."Marcus Veil is your uncle," Maliya said. Not a question."My father's younger brother. He dropped the Anderson na

Chapter Eighty-Three — Coat⚔Micaiah's POV⚔I read the text from where I was standing and felt something cold move through my chest.Maliya was looking at me with her hand still extended, phone screen facing my direction, waiting. I walked toward her and took the phone and read it again like the second time would change what it said.It didn't.I handed it back."What did you take from his coat," she said.I turned and walked to the front door. She followed me inside and I heard her close it behind her. I went to the kitchen, not because I wanted anything from it but because I needed somewhere to stand while I thought.She came in after me and leaned against the counter with her arms folded."Micaiah.""The necklace wasn't the only thing in his pocket," I said.She waited."There was a drive. Small, nothing that would stand out if you didn't know what you were looking at. I took it because a man who comes back early from his honeymoon with a flash drive in his coat pocket is a man car