All Chapters of Oops! I Signed A Baby Contract: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The confrontation happened three days later, in the same study where Mateo had once told Mia he didn’t want the contract to end, the room now carrying a different kind of tension entirely. “Did you manufacture the breakup with Vanessa,” Mateo asked, no preamble, standing rather than sitting, arms crossed over a chest still faintly marked by the healing gunshot wound. The Chairman went very still. “Where is this coming from.” “Answer the question, Dad.” A long silence stretched between them, the kind that told Mia everything before a single word confirmed it. “She kissed someone at her own bachelorette party,” the Chairman said finally, voice quieter than Mia had ever heard from him. “I found out through the wedding planner. I made sure you found out too, in the worst possible light, before she had a chance to explain herself.” “Why.” “Because she wasn’t right for this family, Mateo. She was soft where this world requires steel. She would have made you soft too, eventually, and I

The Chairman’s recovery crept forward in small, uncertain increments, good days followed by setbacks that sent the whole family’s hearts into their throats before another slow climb resumed. Mia found herself spending long afternoons at his bedside, some days trading stories, other days sitting in comfortable silence while he slept, a strange and unexpected intimacy growing between them that had nothing to do with contracts or grandchildren or any of the reasons that had first thrown their lives together.“You didn’t have to keep visiting,” he told her one afternoon, voice stronger than it had been the week before. “I threatened your husband’s inheritance the first time I met you. You owe me nothing.”“I know I don’t owe you anything.” Mia adjusted his water glass without really thinking about it, the kind of small caretaking gesture that had become automatic somewhere in the last few months. “I keep visiting because somewhere in this mess, you became someone I actually care about. Th

The baby shower had been Kessia’s idea, small and deliberately quiet given everything the family had survived over the past several months, just close friends and family gathered in the same back garden where Mia had once stood frozen after her mother’s first devastating confrontation about the marriage.It felt, that afternoon, like a genuine reclaiming of the space, laughter replacing the fear that had lived there for weeks, Mia’s mother fussing happily over tiny clothes with the Chairman, wheelchair parked companionably beside her, both of them cooing over onesies like the most natural grandparents in the world.“You look happy,” Mateo said, finding her by the drinks table, hand resting briefly, instinctively, against the curve of her stomach that had finally started to show.“I am happy. Terrifyingly, unreasonably happy, given everything hanging over us right now.” She glanced toward the gate, where two extra security guards stood more visibly than usual, a necessary intrusion on

The Chairman’s face had gone bloodless, every trace of the composed, guilty man from moments ago replaced by something harder, older.“Franklin,” he said, voice carefully level despite the tremor Mia could see in his hand. “I wondered when you’d finally show yourself.”“I’ve been here the entire time, Emeralds. You simply stopped looking closely enough to notice.” Franklin’s voice carried the particular ease of a man who’d never once doubted he’d win. “I assume you’ve found the Meridian trail by now, given the sudden interest in nine year old board minutes.”“You forced Everly out of this family.”A pause, brief but telling. “I gave her the truth about a marriage that had stopped serving either of you. What she did with that truth wasn’t my doing.”“You lied to her. You lied to me. You’ve spent nine years slowly dismantling everything I built while pretending to be my oldest friend.”“I’ve spent nine years correcting a mistake the board made when it chose a sentimental fool over a com

The message, when Mia finally saw it over breakfast the next day, was from an address she didn’t recognize, sent at nearly three in the morning, and the subject line alone made her set her coffee down with hands that had started shaking again despite everything.Franklin wasn’t working alone. There’s a board seat still loyal to Meridian’s original goals. You stopped one man. You didn’t stop the plan.“There’s always something,” Mia said, sliding the phone across the table to Mateo, watching his jaw tighten reading it.“This could be nothing. A scared employee trying to cover their own involvement before Franklin’s case exposes them.” He set the phone down, though his eyes stayed on the screen a beat longer than necessary. “Or it could be exactly what it says.”“Either way, we can’t just ignore it.”They brought it to Alvarez that afternoon, who confirmed, grimly, that Franklin’s financial records showed payments to at least one other board member over the past three years, someone who