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Chapter 83

Author: Miss Ally
last update Last Updated: 2025-10-09 08:10:44

My skin pricked with curiosity. He reached into the picnic basket and pulled out a small wooden box, the kind that could hold a ring or a seashell or the sort of secret that changes the geometry of life. I could see him choosing each item in the box as if picking stones to build a shrine.

Inside the lid, in his own hand, were words I’d read before — he’d written them earlier on a wisp of paper and tucked it in places I’d later find — but this time the gesture felt different, ceremonial.

He opened the box and lifted a soft cloth. Nested in the folds was a tiny object I’d seen before — the carved block with our initials we’d joked about — only this time it sat on a little pedestal he’d made. Beside it, a new thing: a tiny locket on a delicate chain, perfect for a child. On its inside, he’d had a jeweler engrave two tiny stars.

“For the twins,” he said. “Two stars, because there will be small things to remember and two bright lights we’ll hold onto. Mine wants to be practical and say ‘in
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  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 119

    We both sat up, breath still trailing like wisps. The visitor on the step was Nora—breathless as ever, a sheaf of papers in her hands and a face that had urgency knotted into tenderness. She moved like someone who’d been running from decades and carried a secret too heavy to postpone.“We found something,” she said before any greeting, and the way she said it made the air in the room change. “Not the ledger this time—something that ties Reed to the firm that handled the fake files.”My heart did a thing like a small bird. “What is it?” I asked.Nora handed him a USB stick and a trembling smile. “I was helping archivists sort through Roderick’s papers,” she explained. “There were receipts—little things, invoices. One referenced a consultancy with a different name, but the same registered address as one of Reed’s shell firms. Then I found this—an old voicemail someone on that firm left on a backup voicemail box. It mentions a ‘pressure campaign’ and a list of targets. They used ‘Willow’

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 118

    We’d promised ourselves one day of small joys before the court. Marcus had argued for rituals — “little things that anchor the soul,” he called them — and I’d put my foot down that one of those little things had to be pancakes. Teal pancakes, because apparently the future needed ridiculous colors.The morning light in the inn felt softer than the headlines: gold through the curtains, dust motes spinning like tiny benedictions. For once there were no lawyers in the kitchen, no emails blinking like guilty insects. Just him, in an oversized shirt and the same slippers he’d worn since we moved in, and me, alarmingly pleased to be able to watch him butter toast without thinking about subpoenas.“You look like trouble,” I said, because watching him whistled over a pan made me flirt-ready and cowardly in the very best way.“Only the good kind,” he answered, grin full and dangerous. He slipped an arm around my waist and pressed a quick kiss to the small curve where my neck meets my shoulder.

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 117

    On the walk back, we stopped under the willow. The rain had given the leaves the sort of shine they get when the world decides to wash off its worst thoughts. Marcus took my face in his hands like a man who had learned that rituals don’t just occur in courtrooms.“You okay?” I asked, because he had been holding the weight of a legacy and now seemed, incongruously, younger.He searched my eyes like someone choosing which vows to speak first. “Yes,” he said finally, voice small. “Because you were with me in the vault. Because the past is strange and messy and now it’s honest. Because it named us. Because—” He swallowed. “Because I can stop being afraid of my name.”I reached up and kissed the place above his mouth—the place where tenderness moves into hunger. It was a soft press that spiraled, quickly, into something far hotter. The vault and the bankroom and the vicar were behind us like a curtain; we were two people in a universe that had just been given a reason to keep breathing.We

  • Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend    Chapter 116

    The morning after Nora’s ledger arrived felt like a small, sacred truce. The inn was quieter than usual; the town seemed to be hovering, as if waiting to see which way the weather would blow. Marcus was already at the kitchen island when I wandered in, hair sticking out like a wild halo and a look on his face that made my heart do the idiotic little tumble it always does.“Coffee?” he offered, not because I needed caffeine but because he knows ritual steadies me.I took the mug and watched him from the side as he moved through the kitchen like someone putting armor on with practice—deliberate, methodical, almost tender. His hand brushed mine as he handed me my drink and the small electric jolt of touch landed where it always did: under my sternum, where the twins did their tiny, independent rebellions.“We got a phone call last night,” he said, voice low as if the news itself needed gentling. “From a bank in town. A safe-deposit box under Roderick Hale’s name. It was registered to a c

  • 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

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