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Chapter 106

Author: Miss Ally
last update Last Updated: 2025-10-19 00:10:53

Marcus looked at me with a gratitude so raw it made me dizzy. “They won’t make us into a story,” he said. “Not if we don’t let them.” He pulled me into a kiss that tasted like his earlier promise to always make me a priority. It was a kiss that said we will decide our life; no one else will.

We decided, then, in a way that suited us: the ceremony would remain private, but we would make the reception open to the community—an honest compromise. The morning would be for those who mattered most; the afternoon would be a celebration for the people who fed us, who fixed our chairs, who had forgiven our loudness. We posted the caption with a photo we’d chosen—ours, deliberate—and tagged the inn and the town: Small ceremony in the morning. Community celebration at three. Bring jam. Bring stories. Bring yourselves.

The response was immediate and tender. The town said yes. The strangers’ hunger quieted. The gossip site tried to pivot to a new scandalmonger but found less traction; our story—as
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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 115

    Nora’s eyes were bright. “We never wanted the ledger public before. It’s a record of trust. But maybe trust needs witnesses right now.” She smiled a little. “I thought you’d like to see it.”It felt like a benediction. Evidence that the Willow Inn had always been this — a ledger not of accounts but of acts. The absurdity of love sewn into receipts. The more documents we collected, the smaller the liars seemed. Graham Reed’s gambit looked less like a scalpel and more like a puddle that would dry under accumulated truth.We placed the ledger in the packet counsel would file and watched Nora through the window as she walked away, hair whipping like a flag. Marcus squeezed my hand in a way that said thank you without words. He kissed my knuckles and the tenderness of the gesture rearranged the muscle in my chest.We decided to rest for an hour. It was a decision made with the professionalism of people who have discovered that crises are worse when you run on empty. In the bedroom we were

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 114

    The morning light found the inn wearing yesterday’s dust like a medal — not shameful, but earned. Marcus was at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a patient, tired look that made him younger in the way men do when they carry too many things at once. He looked up when I padded in, eyes bright with the adrenaline of someone who’d stayed up reading the seams of a story until they could see the stitch.“You slept?” he asked.“Like a cat,” I said, because it’s true and because a cat sleeps like it has invested in permanent comfort. He smiled that small, private smile he reserves for me and slid a mug across the table. “We have a court date,” he said, no flourish.I blinked. “Already?”“Forty-eight hours. Reed’s counsel got impatient when his name came up in the link and he demanded certainty. The judge expedited the discovery.” He rubbed his hands together. “We’ll have the forensic report and the original mail headers in two days. If they’re clean, which they are, we can probably f

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 113

    Morning after the storm feels like someone offering a clean plate. The inn smelled of lemon and old paper, and for the first time in days the quiet wasn’t brittle — it was a steadier thing, thinned by work but held in place by truth.Marcus was up before me, as if the day itself had cues only he could read. He sat at the kitchen table with counsel on the laptop and a stack of papers neat as a small fort. He looked up when I padded in, eyes raw around the edges but bright in a way I liked: the sort you get from doing the hard work when nobody is watching. He pushed a mug toward me. “We have something,” he said.My pulse turned into a drum. He’d been moving like a man marshalling a private army — lawyers, forensics, the quiet grunt-of-effort of people who want to prove a lie is a lie. “What is it?” I asked, though my throat was already set against the news.“Forensic accountant says the scanned ‘donation memorandum’ is a composite,” he said. “Several different fonts, stamps added after

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 112

    “No,” I answered instantly. “I want the truth to be out before any pack of vultures can make a spectacle. If you want to handle legal, I’ll handle hearts. I’ll call the local feed, the people who came to our reception. I’ll get the town to back us up.”The plan was messy but it had geometry. We both moved — him to his lawyer, me to the kitchen where I wrote a quick note and put it into the town’s messaging board with a plea for calm and a promise of transparency. I called Juliette, Tom, Elena; within an hour the inn felt like a rallying center rather than a target. People who’d eaten jam on our porch wrote messages of support online. The town feed filled with They’re ours instead of There’s a scandal!But the internet runs faster than breakfast gossip. By noon the story had been picked up by a national outlet that loved scandal more than nuance. A TV van idled on the lane like a predatory beast. The inn’s phone would not stop ringing. An unfamiliar photographer took a long lens shot t

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 111

    The morning began with a kind of quiet I’d started to treasure — the kind that feels like a held breath you don’t have to be afraid of releasing. Marcus slept later than usual, his arm flung over the empty pillow where I’d been, and when he finally padded into the kitchen he carried two mugs like a small offering. He set one in front of me and kissed my forehead with the unnecessary ceremony that still made me melt.“Press day?” I asked, because his phone had been buzzing too much this week for my liking and that had become its own kind of weather.“Just a few calls,” he said, voice low. The way he said it made me look at him more closely — the fine line of tension by his temple, the way his jaw was a practiced thing. “I’ll be in the study. Be a spy for cake.”I laughed and watched him move away, the world of the inn suddenly feeling fragile in a way that made my hands busy. The twins rolled like small, private punctuation points in my belly and I smoothed my palm over them, willing o

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 110

    Reading it, I felt something reverberate in the ribcage — like finding an ancestor who’d left a note that said: I trusted you to do the right thing. Please do not let my fear of losing face turn into someone else’s power. Roderick wasn’t just a man who’d given money; he’d been a man who tried to buy back his conscience in the most careful way he could.“This is huge,” Marcus whispered, voice small as if the document itself might break if spoken too loudly. Legally, it was not an iron lock, but it was a very serious precedent: a written custodial clause from a Hale elder that made swallowing the inn into a corporate asset far messier than a single check or a board vote.“What now?” I asked. The question was both practical and tender. We’d wanted not just sentimental victory but something that could shelter the inn and the lives in it.He folded the paper with the reverence of someone handling a relic and set his jaw in that way I’d learned to see as concentration. “We bring this to Jam

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