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Chapter 10

Author: Miss Ally
last update Last Updated: 2025-08-26 01:11:13

The photo burned in my palm like something that should have been hot. Marcus—arm slung over a woman I didn’t know—laughing in a way that belonged to a life I hadn’t been part of. The light caught their faces and made everything look untrue, like a snapshot staged for someone else’s story.

I stared until my vision blurred and the world tilted sideways. For a second I couldn’t tell whether my mouth wanted to form questions or apologies. Then my fingers tightened around the phone and I found my feet moving before my head could catch up.

He was in the driveway, leaning against his car the way you lean against something you plan on never letting go of. He glanced up as I walked toward him, the muscle in his jaw tightening like an animal that’d just been startled. The evening air smelled like cut grass and something faintly metallic—again the way his presence seemed to color the world.

“You okay?” he asked. The question was simple, but the way his voice dropped when he said it made the litt
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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 42

    Tom’s office smelled like old paper and the faint lemon polish he favored—comforting and impossibly ordinary, and that ordinary was what made the rest of it feel like a betrayal. The way the afternoon light fell on his desk made him look smaller somehow, like the room had swallowed some of his shoulders. He stood when I came in, an automatic, fatherly instinct that pulled at something in my chest. “Claire,” he said, and there was that familiar lift in his voice that always made my insides steady. “You didn’t have to—” “I wanted to,” I said before I could let politeness cushion it. There was no choreography left for small talk. Behind him sat the same leather chair I’d climbed into as a child when I wanted to hide from growing-up things. The world outside the glass felt complicated and loud; inside was the center of the noise. Marcus hovered in the doorway like a sentinel—hands folded, posture coiled, the faint bruise still visible at his jaw. He offered a quick nod that said he was

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 41

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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 40

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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 39

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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 37

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