All Chapters of The Sweetest Stepmom: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

"Richard," Margaret said again, her voice hollow. "My husband's younger brother. He was seventeen when this recording was made. Reckless, always chasing some scheme or another, but I never imagined anything close to this." "You said he died in a boating accident," Ethan said slowly. "When." "Fifteen years ago," Margaret said. "Off the coast of Maine. The boat was found capsized. His body was never recovered, but everyone assumed the currents had simply taken him. There was a funeral. A headstone. I attended it myself." "A funeral without a body," the detective said grimly, "is exactly the kind of thing that makes a disappearance easy to fake, if someone had the resources and motivation to want the world to believe they were gone." "Why would he want everyone to think he'd died," Amelia asked. "Perhaps because Eleanor's death was finally close to being investigated properly around that same time," Daniel said slowly, working through the timeline. "Whitfield's suspicions were appar

"What does that mean," Amelia asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Why I specifically could have ended up in her place. That sounds like he's saying this wasn't random at all. Like he's saying someone chose me." "Or something," Daniel said quietly, "chose you. We already suspected the accident wasn't an accident. If Richard is telling the truth, and Gerald orchestrated it for reasons that have nothing to do with money or inheritance, then whatever's actually happening here goes deeper than corporate greed." "Is there any way to reach Richard directly," Ethan asked. "If he's genuinely trying to warn her, rather than manipulate her, we need to hear the rest of whatever he knows." "The letter includes a contact method," Patrice said, scrolling further down the document. "An encrypted messaging app, apparently. He's left instructions for Amelia to reach him there, and only there, if she wants the full story." "That could be a trap," Ethan said immediately. "Luring her into contac

"What could possibly be more important than thirty years of buried evidence," Amelia demanded, her voice shaking despite her effort to sound steady. Gerald's smile, visible even through the grainy video call, carried something unnervingly patient. "Loose ends, Amelia. I've spent three decades learning that the biggest threats are rarely the ones everyone's watching closely. They're the quiet ones, sitting forgotten in holding cells, waiting for someone to remember they exist." "Vanessa," Ethan said sharply, understanding dawning. "You're going after Vanessa." "She knows considerably more than she's told anyone so far," Gerald said. "I financed several of her early ventures, decades ago, back when Richard and I still worked together before our falling out. If she decides cooperating with prosecutors might reduce her own sentence, certain details about my involvement could surface far sooner than I'd prefer." "You're planning to silence her," Amelia said, horror coiling through her

"That's not possible," Ethan said flatly. "Richard reached out to warn Amelia. Why would he flee alongside the exact man he was trying to expose." "Unless the warning was never genuine," Daniel said grimly, having joined them in the kitchen the moment Patrice's update came through. "Unless Richard's letter was simply another layer of manipulation, designed to earn Amelia's trust at precisely the moment it would matter most." "Or," Amelia said slowly, thinking it through, "the warning was real, but something changed between then and now. Maybe Gerald found him first. Maybe whatever happened at that bank wasn't an alliance forming, but a negotiation, or even a threat, that ended with Richard having no choice but to leave with him." "Security footage will clarify which it was," Patrice said. "I've requested the full feed, not just the still images. We should have clearer answers within the hour." The household settled into another uneasy wait, exhaustion and tension tangled together

Patrice turned the phone fully toward the room, and Amelia leaned forward, studying the enhanced image carefully. The man's face was partially obscured by a jacket collar, but the jawline, the particular way he held his shoulders, was unmistakable once she looked closely enough. "That's Jason," Amelia said slowly. "Jason Kensington." "He's supposed to be cooperating with prosecutors," Ethan said, disbelief coloring his voice. "He agreed to testify against Grace. Why would he be standing guard over Richard at a bank in the middle of the night." "Perhaps his cooperation was never entirely genuine," Daniel said grimly. "Or perhaps he's cooperating on multiple fronts simultaneously, playing every side carefully enough to land wherever the dust eventually settles." "We need him brought in immediately," Patrice said, already dialing. "If he's been maintaining contact with Gerald or Richard this entire time, his earlier testimony about Grace could be compromised, or worse, deliberately m