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Chapter 4
Last Updated:
2025-03-06 07:06:03
Latest chapter
MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE Chapter 40
Alice’s POV Some nights feel like they never end just stretch into each other like shadows refusing to pull back. This was one of them. I stood in the hallway long after Ryan left, my back against the closed door, arms crossed tight like I was trying to hold myself together. I could still hear the way his voice cracked. The way he said her name like he didn’t know what it meant anymore. Clara. It used to be simple. She was my sister. Then she became the lie that stood between me and my children. Now? She was something else. Something dangerous and desperate. I walked to the kitchen. The mug of tea I’d made earlier was cold, untouched. I didn’t bother reheating it. I just poured it out and ran the tap until it turned warm again. Safe. That was the word Aaron had used. He’d named a star after it. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud but it cracked something open in me. He hadn’t called me Mom yet—not once but he trusted me with the stars and that had to count for something. Th
MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE chapter 39
Alice’s POV The morning was gray and still when I woke up. Not the kind of still that brings peace but the kind that sits in your chest, unmoving. Heavy. I found Aaron curled up in a corner of the couch, the space map Mera made for him folded neatly under his cheek. His hair was tousled, the way Ryan’s used to get when he was nervous or lying. Mera was still asleep upstairs. I could hear the slow thump of her feet turning under the covers, the squeak of her bunny tucked beneath her arm. The house was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that made me hold my breath. I walked past the couch and into the kitchen, trying not to disturb either of them. The kettle hissed to life, and for a moment, I just stared at the cabinets, unsure of what I was even doing anymore. Aaron was here. That should’ve been everything. And yet, it wasn’t. The reunion was happening in fragments—small looks, half-formed words, hesitant touches that felt like apologies neither of us knew how to give. He was
MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE Chapter 38
Clara’s POV I’ve been waking up to silence. No Aaron humming in the next room, no familiar weight of someone moving around the apartment. Just me, and the long, flat quiet that stretched like a wound. I sat up slowly, the blanket slipping off my shoulders. The ache in my spine wasn’t from sleep. It was from the way I’d curled around myself last night, trying to make something out of nothing. Trying to feel less hollow. My hands drifted to my stomach. Still flat, still pretending. No bump, no heartbeat echoing inside me but I held the lie close like it could still save me, if I held it tightly enough, it would become true. Maybe it wasn’t even about Ryan anymore, maybe it never really was. Maybe it was about not being the one left behind, not being the one discarded again. Because that’s what Alice had done. She came back, and the whole world tilted toward her. Aaron, who used to cling to me after every nightmare, now looked at me with doubt behind his lashes. Ryan, who had o
MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE Chapter 37
Alice’s POV The first few days felt like walking across a frozen lake, afraid each step would send us crashing through. Aaron still didn’t speak much. He kept to himself, retreating to corners of the apartment like he was afraid of taking up too much space. Mera, on the other hand, floated through the silence like sunlight, completely unbothered, talking enough for both of them. He watched her. Not in the curious way strangers do. But carefully, like he was trying to figure out how she did it, how she moved so freely in a world that still felt dangerous to him. I didn’t push. I’d learned that from him. That some children bloom in bursts and some need time. Soil. Water. Quiet. So I gave him all the quiet he needed. Even when it killed me. That evening, after I tucked Mera into bed, I lingered in the hallway, unsure whether I should check in on Aaron or let him be. I didn’t want to hover but I also didn’t want him to think I wasn’t watching—wasn’t here. His door was cracked open
MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE Chapter 36
Ryan’s POV I hadn’t gone back to the estate after the hearing. I drove for hours instead. No music, no destination just the steady hum of tires on the road and the kind of silence that felt like punishment. Everything felt too loud the moment I stepped out of the courtroom. Clara’s sobbing, Victoria’s icy rage, the reporters shouting my name like it meant something. None of it made sense anymore and maybe that was the part that scared me the most—how easy it had become to stand in the middle of all their lies and just… exist there. Like it was normal, like it was fine but it wasn’t. It had never been fine. I pulled over eventually, parked under a crooked streetlight, and sat there with my hands clenched around the steering wheel. I couldn’t stop seeing Alice. The way her face had stayed steady when the judge read the verdict. Not triumphant. Not smug. Just… steady. Like she had built her backbone from every scar we’d left on her. God, I’d let them ruin her. I let them ruin my
MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE Chapter 35
Clara’s POV I hated the silence most. Not the shouting, not the accusations, not even the sound of my own voice cracking around the lies I kept telling. It was the silence. The kind that lingered after the door closed, after the lights were turned off, after Aaron stopped looking back at me. I used to think silence was peaceful. Now I know it’s punishment. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring down at a framed photo of Aaron when he was four. His cheeks were fuller then, his smile crooked like mine used to be before the world took it and sharpened it into something else. I used to brush his hair back every morning, pack his bag, kiss his forehead. He used to love me. He used to call me Mama. Now? Now he was at Alice’s and I wasn’t invited. No matter how many times I tried to replay the scene in my mind, the courtroom verdict played on loop. Final, clear and brutal. Alice wins. I lose. Aaron didn’t run to me when the judge spoke. He didn’t cry or even look confused. He ju
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