All Chapters of The Sweetest Stepmom: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Ten years from now, if nothing changes... The headline would read: WHITMORE HEIRESS SENTENCED — FROM SOCIALITE TO CONVICT. Amelia Whitmore stood behind the defendant's table in a courtroom on Centre Street, her Chanel suit wrinkled from three sleepless nights, her once perfect hair scraped back into a knot that made her look ten years older than twenty-nine. Somewhere behind her, cameras flashed through the glass doors, hungry for the fall of a woman New York had once envied. She did not look at the judge. She looked at the boy sitting stiffly beside his father in the front row. Noah, eight years old now, refusing to meet her eyes. He had stopped calling her anything at all three years earlier. Not "Mom." Not even her name. Just silence, the kind a child learns when the adult meant to love him instead taught him to flinch. "In the matter of Whitmore versus Whitmore," the judge intoned, "the court finds sufficient evidence of cruelty, infidelity, and financial misconduct" Ethan W

"What is this," Ethan said quietly, and the quiet was worse than shouting. He turned the phone toward her, screen still glowing with Vanessa's message, like he was presenting evidence in a trial Amelia hadn't known she was standing in. He still doesn't know about the baby. Keep it that way until after the divorce is final. "I don't know," Amelia said, and it came out shaking because it was, for once, completely true. "I've never seen that message before in my life." "It's your phone." "I know how it looks" "Do you." His voice had dropped to something flat and cold, the voice of a man who had already decided the ending and was only waiting for her to catch up to it. "Whose baby, Amelia? Mine? Is that why you were so insistent on separate bedrooms the last two months because you were already carrying someone else's child and needed the excuse?" The words landed like slaps, each one aimed at a version of her that didn't exist a stranger wearing her face, who had apparently

"Paternity," Amelia repeated, the word landing strange in her mouth. "For whose child?" "That's what I intend to find out," Ethan said, and for the first time since she'd woken up in this life, his coldness wasn't aimed at her. It had turned outward, toward whoever had used his wife's name like a weapon. "The clinic wouldn't release the requesting party's details over the phone. I have someone driving over there now." Margaret had gone very quiet, her earlier composure replaced by something brittle, her cream gloved hands pressed flat against the marble counter like she needed it to stay upright. "Margaret," Ethan said, noticing. "You look ill. Sit down." "I'm fine," Margaret said, too quickly. "I should go. I have a luncheon." "You just said you came to talk to me." "It can wait." She was already moving toward the door, and Amelia watched her go with the growing certainty that Margaret Whitmore knew exactly whose paternity test this was, and was far more frightened of th

"Cousins," Amelia repeated, the word tasting strange and dangerous in her mouth. "You're saying we're related." "I'm saying," Vanessa said, smiling like she was savoring every second of this, "that my mother was Eleanor Bennett's younger sister. Which makes me a Bennett by blood, the same as you except I never had to be given away to find that out." The words landed like a slap dressed up in silk. Amelia felt Ethan go rigid beside her, his hand hovering near her back like he wasn't sure yet whether to comfort her or brace for a fight. "That's enough, Vanessa," Ethan said. "You didn't come here for a family reunion." "Didn't I?" Vanessa's eyes flicked toward him, softening in a way that made Amelia's stomach turn. "I came because I care about this family, Ethan. More than you'll ever believe. I simply thought Amelia deserved to know the truth before Daniel Bennett's lawyers show up with a claim of their own." "What claim?" Amelia asked. Vanessa's smile sharpened. "Eleanor's