All Chapters of Step Daddy's Lakeside Sin : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

(Richard POV)The hospital smelled like every hospital I had ever hated. The disinfectant, recycled air, and the faint metallic edge of things people didn’t want to remember. Millie sat beside me in the waiting area with one hand resting on the small curve of her stomach and the other wrapped around mine. She was trying to appear calm. I could feel the tension in her fingers. The drive here had been quiet. Too quiet. Ever since her father stepped out of the trees and spoke Vivienne’s name, the silence between us had carried new weight.“You don’t have to come into the exam room if you don’t want to,” she said softly.“I’m coming.”She gave me a small look, the one that said she knew I was holding something back again, but she didn’t push. Not here. A nurse called her name. We stood. As we walked toward the corridor, an older nurse near the records desk glanced up. For a split of a second her eyes landed on my face. The clipboard in her hands dipped. The color drained from her expressi

(Adrianna’s POV)The building was quieter than I expected. I had stood across the street for almost twenty minutes before I made myself walk in. My hands were cold even though the evening wasn’t. Inside the elevator I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall and barely recognized the woman looking back, thinner face, harder mouth, eyes that had stopped trying to look composed days ago. The house I had shared with Richard and Millie felt like a tomb now. Silence had a weight, and it had been pressing on me until I couldn’t breathe inside it anymore. Vivienne’s floor was hushed. Expensive. The kind of quiet money buys when it wants distance from consequences. I knocked once. No one answered. Then I knocked again. Still nothing. The rage that had been sitting in my chest for weeks didn’t care about manners. When I tried the handle and felt it give, something cold and decisive settled over me. The apartment was dim. Curtains drawn. The air smelled faintly of her perfume and something cle

(Adrianna’s POV)For several seconds I could not move. Vivienne lay half-curled against the base of the console, one hand limp near the fallen letter opener, the other loosely resting in the darkening blood at her hairline. The crystal vase had rolled a few inches away on the carpet and stopped, still intact. The quiet after the impact was worse than the sound itself. It left too much room for the truth of what I had done to settle.On the phone, Richard’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears.“Adrianna. Answer me. What happened?”I dragged in a breath that scraped. “She came home. We argued. She reached for something sharp and I…” My voice fractured. “I hit her.”“With what?”“A vase,” I stammered.The silence that followed was brief and heavy.“Is she breathing?” he asked. His voice had changed. The controlled heat of confrontation was gone, replaced by something colder and more focused.I forced myself to take a step closer, then another. My knees felt unreliable. When I crouche

(Millie POV)The house felt wrong the moment the call ended. Richard’s voice was still in my ear controlled, firm way, telling me to stay, telling me he was handling it, telling me not to come. He had said Vivienne was injured. He had said my mother was involved. He had said he would explain everything when he got back.And he had said it from her apartment.I stood in the middle of the living room with the phone clutched in my hand and the baby shifting restlessly under my ribs, as if even they could feel the spike of fear and anger moving through me. The curtains were half drawn. The locks were turned. None of it felt like safety. It felt like being left behind inside someone else’s decision again. I tried to sit. But I lasted less than a minute. If my mother and Vivienne had gotten into a violent confrontation, if Richard was there containing blood and secrets, then waiting passively in a quiet house while the people who shaped my life collided without me was impossible. I had done

(Millie POV)The structure was a cabin, older than I expected and better maintained than it first appeared from the road. Henry unlocked the door and motioned me inside without touching me. That detail mattered more than it should have. He was still performing control, not frenzy. The main room was one open space: a low couch, a table, heavy curtains already drawn, a kitchenette along the far wall. One lamp burned in the corner. The air smelled faintly of dust and recent cleaning, as if the place had been prepared without being lived in.I stopped a few steps from the door.“If this is about money, Richard will pay.”Henry closed the door and turned the lock with a soft, final click. “It isn’t about money.”“Then what?”He removed the cap and set it on the table. Without it, he looked fully himself again, composed, intelligent, and colder than the version of him Henrietta used to defend. My phone remained in his pocket. The car keys disappeared into a drawer he shut with his hip.“Sit