All Chapters of MY STEP SISTER'S MARRIAGE: I AM HER SUBSTITUTE : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Alice’s povThe courthouse waiting room smelled like old paper and disinfectant everything was plain—plain walls, plain chairs, plain faces trying not to look too hopeful or too tired. I sat in the far corner, my palms pressed to my knees to keep them from shaking.I wasn’t nervous not exactly. I was holding everything too tightly for nerves.Ryan sat a few seats away from me, scrolling through his phone like the glow of the screen could shield him from the weight of today. Reeves hadn’t said much since we arrived, just handed me a coffee and nodded when I took it. That was enough words would’ve ruined the calm I was trying to fake. He’d gone over everything with me a dozen times. The documents, the photos and the testimony, I kept replaying it in my head.Aaron’s book and his voice. The look in his eyes when he handed it to me.I wasn’t just fighting for visitation anymore. This hearing meant more. It was a chance to shift custody, a chance to be seen again not just as the mother t

Clara’s pov I slammed the bathroom door and leaned hard against it, locking it behind me. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror too pale, too angry, too exposed.Ryan was never supposed to look at me like that.He wasn’t supposed to doubt me. Not like that, not after everything I’d done for him, for Aaron, for us.My hands shook as I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face. It did nothing to cool the rage burning beneath my skin.I had given him everything, I stood by him when Alice disappeared, I raised his son, I made our life look whole when it was anything but.And now?He was slipping through my fingers.No, she was pulling him.Alice.She walked into that courtroom like she’d never bled, like she didn’t have dirt on her soul, like she hadn’t abandoned them.And worst of all, she was convincing.I saw it. In the judge’s eyes and in Ryan’s and it made me want to scream.I slammed the heel of my hand against the counter, hard enough to sting. My pulse w

Alice’s povI didn’t sleep. Again.The file Reeves gave me sat on the kitchen counter all night, unopened, but I didn’t need to flip it open again to feel the weight of it pressing down on my chest.They wanted me rattled.Clara wanted me to look unwell, to be unstable.Victoria wanted me to disappear again but this time, I had no intention of playing by their rules.At 6:14 a.m., I made coffee and stood barefoot in the kitchen, staring at the gray light bleeding in through the blinds. The city was just beginning to wake up.I already had a head start.Reeves had sent over a name last night before going silent. One of Victoria’s old assistants—a woman who had “quietly resigned” three years ago after some internal dispute no one could ever prove. Her name was Leila Hart, and according to the attached message, “She saw more than they realized.”I sipped my coffee and read the name over and over again.If Leila talked—even just a little it could be the thread I needed to pull the whole t

Victoria’s povI always arrive early. It’s not habit. It’s dominance.If you’re already seated, they walk in thinking they’re late even when they’re not. It shifts the dynamic and gives me control. Most people are too foolish to realize how much of life is decided before a single word is spoken.The courtroom smelled like cheap paper and nerves. I preferred boardrooms, penthouse views and contracts written in ink and power but sometimes, war required dirt.And courtrooms? They were excellent battlegrounds.I sat with my legs crossed, gloves in my lap, watching the empty benches fill one by one. Reeves entered first—always wearing that pathetic quiet confidence, as if decency still won wars. Then came Alice.She didn’t look broken anymore.That was a problem.Her coat was black, tailored. Her chin lifted. No lawyer had to usher her in or direct her to her seat. She knew exactly where to go. She looked… dangerous.I hated that.I’d spent years reshaping her absence into something conven

Aaron’s povSometimes, I pretended my head was a spaceship.When it got too loud with Clara yelling, Victoria’s voice like knives, the rules I couldn’t keep straight I’d close my eyes and imagine I was floating far away. Past the moon, past Mars. Out to where no one could follow me, where it was quiet and safe.Today wasn’t quiet.Dr. Monroe sat across from me, legs crossed, notebook balanced on one knee. She smiled a lot, but not in the fake way Clara did when people were watching. It was soft and real but still made me nervous.I didn’t like being watched. Not when I was supposed to talk but she didn’t ask questions like the other grown-ups. She just said:“Tell me a story.”So I did.Not the one about school or the one about Clara’s house with the glass table I wasn’t allowed to touch.I told her the real one.About the boy in the spaceship.The one who got lost.The one who woke up one day and couldn’t remember where he came from but felt it anyway. Like music you heard once in a