Seduced by My Childhood Sweetheart’s Brother
Chapter 179

Strings of Fate

179- Teamwork and timelines

Another night, another murder. I see Kiara is forced to reach out again. It has to be connected to hermagic in some way. Her species magic. Not her magic as a representative of fate. The poor girl barelyeven made a sound during this one. She moved around like a zombie afterwards and when she wasfinally able to collapse onto the floor, she just sobbed until she passed out. I wake up seriously stupidlyearly in the morning. I don’t want to face the day yet and accept that once again, there is nothing I canactually DO. So I end up just curling up with Bellamy who is still sleeping. He does wake up and ch*ckon me. Peering at me through bleary eyes as I move around, but at this point I don’t really want to talk.So I just hug him close and for a while, I try not to think. It is probably another two hours until Bellamyreally wakes up. He strokes a hand over my hair and pushes it away from my face, then moves back alittle so that he can see my face.

“Morning love.” He greets me with a smile but it quickly falls off his face when he realises that I’m notreturning it.

“Another bad night?” He asks sympathetically.

“The worst. Another murder I think.” I confirm croakily. My eyes hurt and as I rub at them I realisethey’re wet. How long have I been crying? Based on how sticky my eyes feel, I’m going to go withprobably a long while. I sit up and pull a blanket up to my chin, not so much because I’m cold but morebecause it’s kind of comforting. It’s even more comforting when Bellamy puts an arm over my shoulderand pulls me into his side.

“Sweetheart, I want to fix this for you. I wish I knew what to do.” I nod against his shoulder. He is quietfor a couple minutes as he contemplates.

“We’ll call a meeting. Get everyone over here and we can try to figure out if we’ve missed anything or ifthere is any new information. Maybe if we go over everything from the beginning we can work this out.”He says firmly. I’m not totally sure how it will go, but at this point I’ll try anything. Bellamy sends out amessage asking everyone to meet us for lunch today.

Come lunch time, people start arriving. Megan, Bellamy and I set up food on the dining room table. Itwas Megan’s idea. She said she figures that everyone can eat while we think, since this might take awhile. Aaron and Darrien are the first to arrive. Aaron silently follows behind Darrien who makes a bigdeal out of greeting Megan even though he saw her yesterday. Shaun and Alex turn up not long after.Their blue thread sitting between them. Alex sets up his laptop and Shaun organises a pile ofpaperwork and files that they must have printed out before coming. We’re just getting ready to startgoing over things when there’s a loud knocking at the door. Aaron answers and I’m confused when hereturns with Harry and Cam? Did Bellamy invite them to this meeting? I didn’t realise. A glance atBellamy shows that he’s as confused as me.

“Hey guys.” I greet them. Harry cheerfully responds.

“Hey Ry, we’re here for your meeting thing.” He grins. Cam rolls her eyes at him and crosses her armsover her chest.

“Apparently.” She mutters.

“Oh, I mean, that’s cool. But… who fold you about the meeting? I didn’t–think-” I’m cut off by anothercheerful voice.

“Oh that was me!” Amber chimes in from the still open doorway.

“I figured the more people working on the problem the better the chance of replaceing a solution. Also, Ibrought some

179–Teamwork and timelines

extra food.” She says holding up a couple of brown paper bags.

“More guests means more stomachs to feed. Since I invited myself and these guys along. I broughtextra food too.” She explains.

“Oh, well in that case, come on in I guess.” I gesture for the three of them to join us. With ten of usthere aren’t enough chairs, but Aaron and Cam both decide to pull up the kitchen barstools and chill onthem instead of sitting around the table which seats the other eight of us. It’s interesting. Every singleperson in this room is connected to someone with a thread. Red threats between Shaun and Amber,myself and Bellamy, Megan and Darien, Harry and Cam. Then blue threads between Alex and Shaunas well as Megan and I. Actually, I’m wrong Aaron has no threads to anyone in this room. It’s strangebecause he fits in so well with us all. Yet it’s not fated. He has just made the decision to stay with us all.With all these threads floating around it’s actually a little overwhelming. I am just going to have to domy best to focus despite them. At least these are all nice threads. No black ones or anything

We all have something to eat, then we get started. As a group, we systematically go through everysingle thing we know about the psyches. We spit up the files about the murder victims and take turnsexplaining everything we know about them. We even go over the details of the threats I was sent. Wemake a timeline of everything that happened.

“What we’re really missing here is a starting point. The threats against Ryann can’t be the firstinteraction she had with the psychos. Something had to trigger them. You don’t just get up one day anddecide to threaten a random woman or kidnap a child or go on a killing spree.” Darrien observes.

“Well. Yeah. But we don’t know what that trigger is. Megan points out.

“Why would someone who was targeting Ryann suddenly start murdering people? I mean, kidnappingKirkes a vague sort of sense since there is obviously a connection between the two of you, even if youdidn’t know it at first. But why start killing people? Is it part of some ritual? Are these people related toyou in some way?” Cam asks from

where she sits next to Aaron.

“I don’t know any of them. Also I don’t think there is any kind of ritual, unless it involves Kiara’s powersin some way.” I respond with a sigh

“It’s strange that after you came here there were no more threats, not even any attempts at threatstowards you. ! mean, I know you moved here to be safe, but you’re not completely inaccessible. Theycould be texted to you, emailed to you, delivered to a friend, left at the entrance of the compound.There are plenty of ways that someone could get to you. So after going to all that effort to scare you,why just stop all of a sudden?” Shaun adds.

“I’m not sure that’s right.” Alex replies softly. We all turn to face him. With a crowd this big, he’s beenfairly quiet, only really speaking when spoken to

“Explain.” Bellamy demands. Alex looks pule

“Please Alex, feel free to share what you were thinking I tell him gently, hoping to help him relax.

“Well it’s just… has anyone else looked at the pictures?” He asks shyly.

“The pictures?” I prompt.

“The pictures of the victims. They’re in the back of the files. It only just occurred to me while looking atthe most recent victim.” He adds. Bellamy frowns. I don’t think we really have looked at the pictures.We’ve been too busy

179–Teamwork and timelines

looking for connections between the girls or connections to me. Everyone in the group takes out thepictures from the files and we lay them out on the table. Everyone stares at them in stunned silence.

“Oh.” I say weakly. Bellamy is out of his seat in seconds and pulls me out of my spot. When he sitsback down, he takes- me with him. Keeping me on his lap. Megan is the one to say what we’re allthinking.

“Ry… All of those girls… They look just like you.”

Chapter Comments

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Wait that legit didn’t occur to any of them??

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