Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 141 - チャプター 150

Benito~I waited outside the dorm building until the last of the afternoon light had thinned into something cooler and less certain. My hands were shoved deep in my jacket pockets because I did not trust them to stay still. The apology I had rehearsed a dozen times on the walk over sat heavy on my tongue, already tasting like it would not be enough. I had sent the emails. I had forwarded the photographs. I had taken the money and told myself the debt was the only thing that mattered. Now the debt was paid and the damage was still spreading, and the only thing left was to stand in front of Theo and say the words out loud.He came down the steps alone, backpack over one shoulder, the same quiet focus on his face that he wore after hard practices. He saw me and stopped. For a second I thought he might keep walking. Instead he adjusted the strap of the bag and came the rest of the way down until we were level on the pavement.“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said.“I know.” My voice came

Reina~I waited for him in the small conference room on the second floor of the student services building, the one with the frosted glass and the table that always felt too large for the space. The folder under my hand held everything I had gathered so far—the sealed file on Ellis, the retracted fraud story, the list of careers that had bent under Morrison pressure, the timestamps that lined up too cleanly with the emails about Theo. I had read it all twice before he arrived. I did not need to open it again.Theo knocked once and stepped inside when I called. He closed the door behind him and stayed near it for a second, taking in the room the way someone does when they expect the conversation to turn sharp. He looked exactly as tired as the reports suggested—controlled posture, careful eyes, the quiet readiness of a person who has spent too many weeks bracing for the next hit. I remained seated and let the silence settle first.“Sit down, Theo.”He did. The chair scraped lightly agai

Noah~I woke before the alarm and lay still in the dim blue light that filtered through the thin dorm curtains. Theo’s arm was heavy across my waist, his breathing deep and even against the back of my neck. The events of the previous night still sat close to the surface—the way he had broken down after meeting my mother, the raw comparison between her quiet gratitude and his father’s conditional control, the long minutes I had held him while the pressure of weeks finally found an exit. Something in me had shifted while I listened to him cry. The careful distance we had maintained in public, the half-truths, the way we still angled our bodies away from each other when too many eyes were present—all of it suddenly felt like a coat that no longer fit.I slipped out from under his arm carefully, sat on the edge of the bed, and watched the slow rise and fall of his shoulders. The room was quiet except for the distant sound of someone moving in the hallway and the soft hum of the radiator.

I sat in the study with the lights low and the latest reports open across the desk. Every update from the last forty-eight hours was there. The press conference clip. The comments online. The quiet messages from people still loyal enough to keep me informed. Theo had walked into a room full of reporters and spoken like he was the one in control. He had refused to deny the relationship. He had said he was done letting other people tell his story. The words had already spread further than any of the earlier pressure points.I leaned back in the chair and stared at the paused video on the screen. My son looked calm. Steady. Certain of himself in a way that made the problem worse. He had always been talented. That was never the issue. The issue was the path he kept choosing. The people he kept choosing. Every decision pulled him further from the future that had been built for him since he first stepped on the ice.Legacy was not a soft word. It was the reason the company still held its po

Noah~The national news hit before lunch. I was sitting in the back of the lecture hall with Theo’s knee pressed against mine under the desk when my phone lit up with a breaking-alert banner from every major network at once. The volume on the muted classroom projector somehow managed to catch the crawl at the bottom of the feed someone had left open on their laptop two rows ahead. Blackwood University. Hockey star. Private messages. Photographs. The words “suspended pending investigation” scrolled past in white letters against a red bar while a polished anchor’s face filled the small screen, lips moving in the familiar cadence of manufactured outrage. I did not need the audio. The caption alone was enough. Theo’s name and mine sat side by side beneath a still of us walking across the quad that morning, hands linked, faces calm. The freeze-frame made the contact look deliberate, almost staged, which was exactly what we had intended and exactly what the networks now wanted to dissect.