Share

Chapter 55

Auteur: Lizeesilver
last update Date de publication: 2026-02-11 17:02:18

Judge Hendricks looked unmoved by both arguments. "Let's proceed with evidence. Ms. Chen, call your first witness."

"The defense calls Thomas Sullivan to the stand."

Maeve's stomach dropped.

Her father walked to the witness stand, placed his hand on the Bible, and swore to tell the truth.

The irony was almost funny.

Patricia began gently. "Mr. Sullivan, can you describe your relationship with your daughter?"

"I love Maeve more than anything." Thomas's voice was warm, fatherly. "I've spent her e
Continuez à lire ce livre gratuitement
Scanner le code pour télécharger l'application
Chapitre verrouillé

Latest chapter

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 84

    don't mean—" she paused, choosing words carefully, "—I don't mean I'm deciding what comes after. I'm not making a declaration about us. About what we are or could be." She kept her voice even and her eyes on his. "I mean the legal structure. The arrangement. The two years and the obedience clause and the financial provisions and everything that it formally represents." She paused. "I can't stay inside that. Whatever I feel, whatever we're building or not building, it can't be built on that foundation."He looked at her for a long moment."I know," he said."You've known for a while.""Yes.""Then why didn't you—""Because terminating the contract means the NDA provisions about company affairs no longer apply," he said. "Which meant, during the hearing, that—" he stopped. "I was protecting the company."She held his gaze."Even then," he said. "Even knowing what I know now. I was protecting the company." He looked down. "I'm telling you so you know. I'm not — I'm not trying to frame i

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 83

    Okay," he said.She set down her tea."Your kindness was real," she said. "I want to be clear that I know it was real. I'm not going to revise what it was to make this easier to say. You saw me when Carter wasn't seeing me, and you treated me like a person when the household was treating me like a function, and that was real and it mattered." She paused. "I need you to hear that first.""I hear it," he said quietly."But Cameron." She kept her voice even, not gentle-to-softness, just honest-to-kindness, the way true things could be said when you cared about the person you were saying them to. "The timing of it was a weapon."Silence."I know you didn't experience it that way," she continued. "I know you believe you were giving me information. Opening a door. Letting me see an option I might not have seen." She looked out the window. "But the morning you came to the lobby — the morning after the hearing, the morning before the board meeting, the morning when Carter was at his most redu

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 82

    Maeve stood up.Carter looked at her."Go home," she said. "Or wherever you're sleeping. Not here." She looked around at the documents and the laptops. "This will all be here tomorrow. It won't look different at eight AM than it looks right now.""I know.""But you'll be clearer." She picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. "Sleep matters. I learned that in therapy and it's the most practically useful thing I know."He almost smiled. "More useful than tea timing?""Equally useful," she said.He stood. Looked at the desk. Made a decision — she could see him make it — and left the documents where they were. Closed two of the three laptops. Left the third open because some part of him apparently couldn't close all three, and she found that she could hold that as evidence of partial rather than failed progress.They rode the elevator down together in a silence that was entirely different from the one upstairs. The elevator silence of two people who have said enough and don't need

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 81

    The room was very still."What frightens you?" Maeve said.He looked at her."About me," she said. "Specifically. You said I terrify you. I want to know what that means."He was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that she thought he might redirect, might find the professional exit from the question.He didn't."You don't need me," he said.She waited."Every relationship I've ever had — every person who mattered to me — needed something I was in a position to provide. My father needed an heir who reflected well on him. The company needed a leader. Investors needed returns. Elizabeth needed—" he paused, "—Elizabeth needed stability and I was the version of stability she could access at the time." He looked at his hands again. "There was always something. A need I could fill. A gap I could occupy." He paused. "It was the only way I knew how to matter."Maeve was very still."You don't need anything I have," he said. "Not the money, not the position, not the access, not the — none of i

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 80

    "And people in commercial kitchens were at risk.""Yes." The word was flat and total, containing no mitigation.She held it with him for a moment.This was what she'd come to understand about Carter's reckoning — that it wasn't performance. The self-examination he'd been conducting over the past weeks was genuine and unglamorous and occasionally almost painful to witness, because there was no audience for most of it and it kept arriving at conclusions that didn't flatter him and he kept arriving at them anyway."The statement you made addressed it," she said."The statement addressed the public version of it." He straightened up. Moved around the desk to the window again, the orbit of a man who couldn't land. "I keep thinking about the private version. The version where I was a different kind of CEO and this didn't happen. Where I hadn't spent three years managing my father's theft and my own terror of exposure, and the systems functioned the way they were supposed to, and nobody had

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 79

    She woke at one forty-five in the morning to the sound of nothing.That was the thing that woke her — not a sound but the absence of one. The safe house had its own nighttime language, the settling of the building, the distant sound of the city that never fully silenced, the occasional muffled movement from Carter's room that told her he was there, present, another person in the same space. She had learned to sleep inside these sounds without quite registering them consciously, the way you learned the sounds of any place you inhabited long enough.What woke her was their absence.She lay in the dark for a moment, orienting. The room was the same. The window showed the same amber-grey of a city night. The clock on the nightstand read one forty-seven.She got up.His room was empty.Not recently vacated — the bed was made, which meant he hadn't slept. She stood in the doorway looking at it for a moment, the particular neatness of an unused bed, and then went to the window and looked dow

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 45

    He paused, let that settle."So here's what I'm proposing. We postpone the CEO decision for ninety days. During that time, we form a search committee, half appointed by the board, half elected by you. You interview candidates. You vote on who leads this company. Real power. Real choice."Sterling l

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 44

    Angela's voice cracked. "Do you know what it's like to drop your kid off at a daycare you can't afford and hope they're being treated okay? Do you know what it's like to work a ten-hour shift and come home and have to choose between spending time with your son or doing laundry because you're too ex

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 43

    "I'm also very poor," Maeve replied. "I'm acutely aware that I could say the wrong thing and end up implicated in crimes I had nothing to do with. So yes, I'm careful."Agent Park smiled. It was a small smile, but genuine. "I believe you're telling me the truth. I also believe that you care for Mr.

  • MY WAY TO THE BILLIONAIRE'S HEART    Chapter 42

    "Fair," Carter said. "That's fair.""But I'm willing to find out," Maeve continued. "If you're willing to let me make that choice completely freely, with no contracts or coercion or manipulation. If you can accept that I might choose to leave. If you can give me that freedom without condition, then

Plus de chapitres
Découvrez et lisez de bons romans gratuitement
Accédez gratuitement à un grand nombre de bons romans sur GoodNovel. Téléchargez les livres que vous aimez et lisez où et quand vous voulez.
Lisez des livres gratuitement sur l'APP
Scanner le code pour lire sur l'application
DMCA.com Protection Status