All Chapters of The Sweetest Stepmom: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Before the technician's assistant called them into the small conference room, Ethan and Amelia had a few stolen minutes alone in the lab's quiet waiting area, the late afternoon light slanting gently through the blinds. "However this goes," Ethan said, taking both her hands in his, "I want you to know something first, before any lab result gets to decide it for us." "Okay," Amelia said softly, searching his face. "I don't love you because of a bloodline, or an inheritance, or anything a piece of paper could confirm or take away," he said. "I love you because you knelt on the floor of my son's bedroom two days ago and asked him about his nightmares instead of telling him to be quiet. Whatever that technician says in a few minutes, it doesn't change what I already know to be true." Amelia's eyes filled with tears, warm and unexpected in the middle of so much uncertainty. "I love you too," she said, the words simple and enormous all at once. "I didn't expect to. Not this fast, not in

Amelia's breath caught. "Margaret has a sister," she said slowly. "She's never once mentioned that. Not in two days of learning every other secret this family has buried." "According to Patrice's investigator, they haven't spoken in nearly twenty years," Ethan said grimly. "Some falling out, details unclear. Diane apparently kept her maiden name professionally, which is why nobody made the connection immediately." "We need to talk to Margaret," Amelia said. "Tonight. Before this gets any more complicated." They found her in the east sitting room, the same room where she'd first admitted her role in hiding Amelia's adoption records, curled into her favorite armchair with a book she clearly wasn't actually reading. She looked up as they entered, something instantly wary crossing her features at the seriousness of their expressions. "What's happened now," she asked carefully. "Diane Sterling," Ethan said, watching his mother's face closely. "Senior partner at the firm that absorbed

For a long moment, nobody in the kitchen spoke. The pancakes cooled on their plates, forgotten, and the cheerful chaos of the morning drained out of the room like water from a cracked glass. "Lillian Ashworth," Daniel said finally, his voice rough. "That was her name, before she married your father, Margaret. I was twenty years old, a young man drowning in family expectations, and she was the first person who ever made me feel like I was more than a Bennett heir." Margaret gripped the edge of the counter. "My mother never spoke of you," she said quietly. "Not once." "She wouldn't have," Daniel said. "She ended it herself. Told me she was engaged to another man, that our families would never approve, that it was kinder to disappear. I let her go. I was young and proud and convinced I'd get over it." He looked down at the photograph, his thumb tracing the edge of her smiling face. "I never knew there was a child. If I had known, Margaret, I swear on Eleanor's memory, I would have mov

Daniel's hands shook as he turned the old envelope over, the red wax seal cracked with age. Before he could break it open, Patrice stepped forward, one hand raised. "Wait," she said firmly. "If this letter genuinely names Eleanor's killer, we open it properly. Witnessed, documented, and handed directly to the detective already assigned to the accident investigation. Not read aloud in a study where anyone could later claim it was altered or coached." Daniel exhaled slowly, nodding despite his obvious desire to tear it open immediately. "You're right," he said. "Thirty years of waiting can survive one more hour done correctly." Patrice placed the envelope carefully into an evidence bag and made a call to the detective handling the truck driver's confession, her voice brisk and professional even as the room around her buzzed with barely contained tension. "An hour," Ethan said, once she'd hung up. "That's a long time to sit with a secret this big." "Then let's not sit with it," Amel

"Working inside our household," Amelia repeated slowly, her stomach twisting. "Dr. Voss, who is he. What name is he using now." "I need to verify one more detail before I say anything further," Dr. Voss said carefully. "I don't want to name an innocent person based on incomplete records. Give me twenty minutes and I'll call back with certainty rather than speculation." The call ended, and Amelia relayed everything to the room, watching each face shift from confusion to dawning, uneasy suspicion as they mentally cataloged every member of the household staff. "Three years," Ethan said slowly. "That narrows it considerably. Rosa's been with us eight. The kitchen staff turns over constantly. Security, though." He stopped, his expression going carefully blank in the way Amelia had learned meant he was thinking through something he didn't like. "Gerald," Margaret said quietly. "Your head of security. He joined right around the time you married the first Amelia." "Gerald has access to e