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Chapter 184

Author: Miss Ally
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-11-22 18:16:02

The morning the world seemed determined to pick at the scab, it started with a message on Marcus’s phone that made him go very quiet — the kind of quiet I’d learned to read like a map. He’d been up with me the night before, arguing the last bits of a settlement that still smelled like smoke and honey. We’d fallen into a kind of reckless sleep: two people who had been thinned by battle and were braiding their edges back together.

But that morning his thumb hovered, and when he showed me the screen the words felt like a physical shove.

A private channel had leaked a video. Thirty seconds. Grainy. A voice — unmistakably his — edited into a sentence that made it sound like he’d instructed Pryce to “manufacture a sympathy angle.” The clip had been doctored, the cadence clipped, the surrounding context stripped. It looked, to everyone who didn’t have the rest of the tape, damning.

I watched it once and felt the room tilt. The editors had done their arithmetic: take a dozen innocuous phrases
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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Epilogue :Six Months Later

    Sunlight comes into the nursery with the lazy confidence of a town that knows the weather. The twins — absurdly loud and absurdly perfect — are arguing about which lullaby wins at breakfast while Juliette practices a scale that stops being a scale and turns into a laugh. Marcus is at the stove, flour on his cheek like someone who takes domesticity as a solemn art, and the kitchen smells of burned sugar and optimism.“Teal pancakes?” he calls, goofy and proud.“Only if you promise they’re edible this time,” I answer, already standing at the doorway in one of his shirts and a face that is mostly sleep and gratitude. His grin is the thing I would follow around the world.We have a life that looks ordinary and this is our small, deliberate rebellion: ordinary rituals rebuilt after a winter of headlines. The trust is set. The independent board meets monthly and actually listens to townspeople. Reed paid into the fund and lost a lot of public face; Pryce is teaching junior PR ethics to inte

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 185

    Afterwards, breath cooling and bodies blazing, he took my face in his hands. “Marry me again,” he said, ridiculous and perfect. “Not the big paper thing you had to endure with your father. A small one, here, now. Teal ribbons. Laughter. Promise me you’ll pick the jam.”My laugh turned into something like a sob. “We don’t need papers for promises,” I said. “But yes. Teal ribbons. Burned pancakes. Promise.”So we did — because endings in novels and life both deserve a little ceremony. We fetched a crooked mirror from the parlor, borrowed a teal ribbon from Juliette, and stood on the roof with the willow like a witness. Marcus spoke clumsy vows, half of them ridiculous, half of them exact. He promised to call counsel when necessary and to cook breakfast on days that mattered. I promised to be loud, to not let him carry things alone, to tell him when he was being a fool and to kiss him always after. Rupert declared himself officiant with a dignity he’d hidden for decades, and Agnes perfor

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 184

    The morning the world seemed determined to pick at the scab, it started with a message on Marcus’s phone that made him go very quiet — the kind of quiet I’d learned to read like a map. He’d been up with me the night before, arguing the last bits of a settlement that still smelled like smoke and honey. We’d fallen into a kind of reckless sleep: two people who had been thinned by battle and were braiding their edges back together.But that morning his thumb hovered, and when he showed me the screen the words felt like a physical shove.A private channel had leaked a video. Thirty seconds. Grainy. A voice — unmistakably his — edited into a sentence that made it sound like he’d instructed Pryce to “manufacture a sympathy angle.” The clip had been doctored, the cadence clipped, the surrounding context stripped. It looked, to everyone who didn’t have the rest of the tape, damning.I watched it once and felt the room tilt. The editors had done their arithmetic: take a dozen innocuous phrases

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 183

    That night we agreed: no deal that let Reed control the narrative. If they wanted closure, they’d have to accept rules that would make their PR people faint. If Reed refused, we’d let the criminal inquiry move forward. No buying of silence. No branding of our grief.Then the twist arrived like an anonymous email that landed on Marcus’s phone while we were still warm from each other. He glanced at it and his face went suddenly small and very private. He showed me the screen.The message was short, unsigned, and direct. There was a photo attached — a quick, grainy shot of Juliette’s violin case, leaning against the bench in the parlor, her small practice schedule tucked inside. The caption beneath the photo was worse: We can reach the things you love. We can make the world look kindly at a victim you choose. Settle quietly, and the music stays private. Refuse, and we make noise.For a second the room disappeared until all I could see was the case. I thought of Juliette’s tiny fingers, o

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 182

    There’s a particular kind of hush in the penthouse the morning after a courtroom victory — not quite celebratory, more like the quiet of people who have survived a storm and are afraid to jinx the weather. Marcus woke before dawn, as usual, and watched me sleep for a long, ridiculous minute like he could memorize my face one more time. The twins rolled, tiny and insistent, and I pressed my hand to my belly because the world needed that small, stubborn anchor.We didn’t waste daylight. Reed’s offer was on the table: an enforceable public statement of culpability, a substantial trust fund for the Willow’s maintenance, and a promise to underwrite community programs for the next twenty years. The sum was tempting in ways the ledger couldn’t describe — roofs, repairs, legal fees paid for, long-term protection that money actually buys — but the contract came with teeth: nondisclosure clauses expansive enough to choke a newsroom and an oversight committee appointed mostly by their counsel. I

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 181

    There’s a strange calm right before the endgame — not the empty silence of surrender but the hush of people inhaling together, getting ready to push. I woke with that hush inside me, the twins doing quiet somersaults like little drumrolls, and Marcus already up, sleeves rolled, eyes on the schedule like a man reading a battle map. Today Pryce would be cross-examined. Reed would be watching. The judge had given teeth to the process; the country’s newspapers were beginning to sniff the real story instead of the manufactured pity-play. We were finally moving from defense to offense.We dressed like conspirators in the mundane: jeans, soft sweaters, the little things that make a marriage look lived-in instead of staged. He kissed me in the kitchen — quick, fierce, the kind of kiss that stitches armor to skin — and then we were out the door with Rupert at our shoulders and a town-sized bouquet of goodwill trailing behind us. Agnes pressed a paper-wrapped scone into my hand with the austere

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