All Chapters of Lawfully Wedded Nanny (BWWM): Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

The site was quieter than usual. Richard wasn't supposed to be at the site today—an unfinished coastal development still in its skeletal stage, steel ribs rising from sand and stone. The kind of place that lets him think. The kind of place where variables stayed where you put them. Hard hats hung on hooks near the temporary office. A few engineers moved in the distance, voices muted by machinery and wind. The sea stretched beyond the perimeter fence, indifferent and endless. He stood near the edge of the structure, reviewing blueprints on his tablet, when he felt it. That subtle displacement of air. The instinctive awareness that someone had entered his orbit. “Mr. Abbott?” He turned. She stood just inside the safety line, wearing a visitor’s badge clipped neatly to her dress. Pale linen. Sensible shoes. Hair pulled back from her face in a way that made her look younger than she was—or perhaps older. It was hard to tell with her. Elara. Not the uncanny shock of resembl

Monet didn’t rush back.She walked the length of the villa grounds slowly, deliberately, as if each step gave her body time to catch up to the choice she’d already made. The folded paper rested in her bag like a held breath—present, unignorable, but not yet opened.The sky had shifted again. The clouds were thicker now, gathering weight rather than threat. The air felt quieter for it.Richard was on the terrace when she came into view.Not working. Waiting.He looked up the moment she crossed the threshold, instinct sharp enough to cut through distance. His posture changed subtly, neither alarm nor suspicion. Recognition. The kind that came from knowing someone too well.“You were gone longer than you planned,” he said.Not an accusation. A fact.“Yes,” Monet replied.She set her bag down carefully, deliberately, like someone placing something fragile where it wouldn’t fall. She didn’t sit right away. Neither did he.There was a moment—thin, tense—where either of them could have

They didn’t talk much on the way back. Not because there was nothing to say—but because everything felt too sharp to touch without cutting something open. The car moved quietly through the island roads, headlights slicing through palms and shadow. Richard drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely against his thigh. His jaw was tight, but his posture was controlled, the way it always was when he was holding himself together with will alone. Monet watched the blur of green outside her window and tried to slow her breathing. Replacing Hannah. The phrase had lodged itself somewhere behind her ribs, not as an accusation but as a mirror. She didn't ask about Hannah. She never did unless Richard invited it. She’d respected that grief the way you respected something sacred, something you didn’t step into without permission. But Gabriel hadn’t respected anything. And worse—he’d spoken like someone who believed he was right. By the time they reached the villa, Mone

Stephanie Jacobs had always been described as beautiful in a way that unsettled people. Not the loud kind. Not the kind that demanded admiration. Hers was the sort that lingered—soft cheekbones, eyes too thoughtful for her age, skin caught somewhere between worlds. A woman whose very existence asked questions no one ever stayed long enough to answer. She was a pawn. A child born out of shame turned into a coveted item in a world that saw her very existence as a means to an end. Her father and older brother made sure she went to the highest bidder. She learned early that beauty did not protect you from loneliness. The night Monet was born, the rain came down hard enough to bruise the earth. Stephanie remembered that later—not the doctor’s voice, not the blood, not the way her hands shook—but the sound of rain against the window as she held her daughter for the first and only time without fear pressing down on her chest. Monet was warm. That was what undid her. The baby’s

Richard waited in the car. Not because Monet had asked him to but because he knew better than to hover. Some reckonings needed witnesses only at the edges, not at the center. He parked beneath the shade of a palm that had split the afternoon light into wavering bands across the windshield and cut the engine, leaving the world to breathe on its own. He didn’t check his phone. He didn’t open the door. He simply watched. The bench was visible from where he sat—just enough to catch movement without detail. He saw Elara first when she stood, abrupt and rigid, her chair scraping softly against the pavement. Even from this distance, Richard could read posture. He’d built a career on it. Whatever had been said between them hadn’t been gentle. Elara didn’t storm away. She left the way people did when they had already spent their anger and were now carrying something heavier—vindication, perhaps. Or grief sharpened into shape. Monet remained seated. That was what tightened someth