All Chapters of The CEO's Stepdaughter: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

Niccola FairchildA couple of months change everything. I don’t feel like I’m constantly bracing anymore. My body feels like it belongs to me again, stronger, steadier, less raw. Motherhood hasn’t become easy, but it has become familiar. I know Aiden’s cries now, the difference between hunger and boredom and the small, offended sound he makes when the world doesn’t move fast enough for him.I know myself again too. That’s how I end up sitting across from Steph at a quiet restaurant tucked between two galleries in the city, sunlight slanting through tall windows, the noise of Manhattan muted into something almost gentle. We chose this place carefully, private entrance, discreet staff, no visible photographers hovering outside like vultures.Still, the press has been relentless lately. Every outing feels strategic. Every movement is measured. Aiden stays home today, safe with Cole’s mother, and even that feels like a luxury. Steph stirs her drink and smiles at me.

Cole SutcliffeThe airport spits us out like it doesn’t care what state we’re in. Fluorescent lights, echoing footsteps, people reuniting with casual relief, everything feels offensive in its normalcy. I walk faster than I should, Sawyer a half-step behind me, his phone already pressed to his ear as he coordinates a car. My jaw aches from how long I’ve been clenching it.“Cole,” Sawyer says carefully, lowering the phone. “Breathe.”“I am breathing,” I snap, not slowing. It’s a lie. I’m pulling air into my lungs, sure, but it doesn’t feel like breathing. It feels like survival on a technicality. The ride home is torture.Traffic crawls. Red lights stretch longer than physics should allow. Every vibration of my phone sends a shock straight through my chest. I keep checking it even when I know there’s nothing new. No missed calls. No messages. No miracle.Sawyer tries to fill the silence with updates, what the police have done so far, where they are i

Niccola FairchildI wake up to the same ceiling again. Concrete. Stained in places, like time has been dripping here for years. The light is always wrong, either too dim to help or too harsh to be kind. My throat aches. My mouth tastes like metal and old fear, and my tongue feels too big for my mouth.I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I only know how long it feels. I count because it gives me something to hold. I count my breaths. I count the time between footsteps outside the door. I count the hours by the way the air changes, cooler at what I think is night, warmer when the building seems to wake.I keep telling myself one thing over and over, because it’s the only thought that doesn’t destroy me: Aiden is at home. He wasn’t in the car. He wasn’t with me. He’s safe with Cole’s mother, with people who love him, in a house that has locks and alarms and hands that will hold him steady. I say it in my head like a prayer. Aiden is at home.My stomach twi

Cole SutcliffeThe house doesn’t sleep anymore. Lights stay on. Phones stay charged. Every sound feels like it might be something. Aiden finally dozes in Steph’s arms upstairs, and I sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee I haven’t touched, watching it go cold while the world narrows down to one unbearable truth: Niccola is still gone.It’s been days now, long enough for the fear to change shape. The sharp panic burned itself out and left something heavier behind. Colder. Meaner. This is the kind of fear that sharpens focus instead of stealing it.The police move quietly around the house, voices low, footsteps careful. They know this isn’t just another missing person. Not with the press outside. Not with Monica’s little performance earlier, still replaying in my head like a bad echo.I replay Niccola’s laugh instead. The way she crinkles her nose when she’s teasing. The way she says my name when she’s tired, soft, like she’s leaning on it.

Cole SutcliffeThey tell me to sit.They don’t say it unkindly. They don’t bark it like an order. They say it the way doctors tell families to wait outside operating rooms, firm, practiced, already braced for resistance.“Mr. Sutcliffe, we need you to stay here.”Here is my living room. My house. The place where Niccola should be, where her shoes are still by the door, where her mug sits half-forgotten by the sink like she might come back and finish it. Here is not where she is. I stand anyway.“No,” I say. “I’m coming.”Officer Reynolds meets my gaze. He’s calm. Too calm for a man about to walk into a building where my fiancée is being held.“You go, they change the rules,” he says. “You stay, we keep her alive.”My hands curl into fists so tight my nails bite skin. “You think I don’t know that?” I snap.“I think you know it,” he replies evenly. “I also think it’s killing you.”That lands. Because it is.S