All Chapters of Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Theo~ I woke up later than usual and reached for my phone on the nightstand. The screen showed a few messages from teammates and one from Noah asking if I wanted to meet for lunch later. I opened my banking app out of habit to check if the last deposit from the team had cleared. The balance looked normal at first, but when I tried to move a small amount to my everyday account the screen flashed red. Transaction declined. Card frozen. I stared at it for a few seconds and tried again. Same message. Both cards were locked. I sat up in bed and opened the insurance app next. A notice sat at the top of the page saying the policy on my car had been cancelled effective immediately. No reason given beyond non-payment. I had set the payments to come from the same account that was now frozen. My phone plan was next. The provider had sent an email overnight saying the line would be disconnected in twenty-four hours unless the outstanding balance was cleared. Everything pointed to the same sour

Benito~I sat on the edge of the bed in the small room I rented above the corner shop and stared at the floor until the light from the window shifted across it. The guilt had been sitting in my chest for days now and it was getting heavier. Every time I checked my phone and saw another message from the number I was not supposed to answer I felt it press harder. I had started this. That was the part I could not push away no matter how many times I told myself the money had been necessary.Theo’s father had found me weeks earlier. I still remembered the first meeting clearly because nothing about it had felt normal. He had sent a short text with an address and a time. No name. No explanation. Just the location of a quiet café on the edge of the industrial area where the tables were far apart and the staff did not linger. I almost did not go. Then I thought about the hospital bills that kept arriving and the way my mother had stopped answering the phone when the collection agencies calle

Reina~I spread the files across my kitchen table under the harsh overhead light and stared at the name printed in bold at the top of the first folder. Morrison. The same name that had started appearing in quiet conversations around the club, the same name attached to the sudden pressure on Theo, the same name that kept turning up in places it had no business being. My coffee had gone cold hours ago. I didn’t care. The stack of printouts, old articles, and sealed court documents felt heavier than paper should.I had started digging the moment the anonymous emails about Theo reached my desk. Something about the timing felt wrong. Too clean. Too convenient. Sponsors asking questions right after Theo walked away from the old contract and started being seen with Noah. I had seen smear campaigns before, but this one carried the sharp edge of someone with real resources and no patience for subtlety.The first few hours turned up nothing useful. Public records showed Theo’s father as a succe

Noah~I was still half-asleep when my phone started buzzing against the nightstand, the screen lighting up the dark corner of the dorm room in short, insistent flashes. Theo’s breathing stayed steady beside me, one arm thrown loosely across my waist like he had claimed the space in his sleep and refused to give it back. I reached for the phone carefully, not wanting to wake him, and squinted at the notifications stacking up one after another.A campus account I barely followed had posted a photo. Blurry. Taken from a distance. Two figures walking near the edge of the quad, hands linked, shoulders close. The caption was short and pointed.Who’s this?I stared at it longer than I should have. The quality was bad enough that faces were hard to make out, just the shape of us, the way Theo’s thumb hooked over mine, the familiar tilt of my head toward him. Anyone who knew us well would see it. Anyone who didn’t would only see two guys holding hands on a Thursday morning like it was the most

Theo~I pushed open the locker room door and the usual noise died faster than it should have. Not completely. Just enough to notice. A couple of guys near the far benches kept talking, but their voices dropped the second they saw me. Someone closed a phone screen with a quick flick of the thumb. The air smelled like the same mix of tape and sweat and cold ice that had always felt like home, yet today it sat differently in my lungs, heavier, like it had weight I could not quite push out.I walked to my stall without looking around too hard. The captain’s patch on my jersey stared back at me from the hanger, the same one I had worn all season without thinking twice about what it meant. I pulled the jersey down and started changing, keeping my movements steady even though my hands wanted to rush. Beside me, Reid laced his skates in silence. He usually had something to say—some comment about the previous night’s game or a quiet complaint about the new drills Coach had added. Today he only