All Chapters of Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Reading it, I felt something reverberate in the ribcage — like finding an ancestor who’d left a note that said: I trusted you to do the right thing. Please do not let my fear of losing face turn into someone else’s power. Roderick wasn’t just a man who’d given money; he’d been a man who tried to buy back his conscience in the most careful way he could.“This is huge,” Marcus whispered, voice small as if the document itself might break if spoken too loudly. Legally, it was not an iron lock, but it was a very serious precedent: a written custodial clause from a Hale elder that made swallowing the inn into a corporate asset far messier than a single check or a board vote.“What now?” I asked. The question was both practical and tender. We’d wanted not just sentimental victory but something that could shelter the inn and the lives in it.He folded the paper with the reverence of someone handling a relic and set his jaw in that way I’d learned to see as concentration. “We bring this to Jam

“No,” I answered instantly. “I want the truth to be out before any pack of vultures can make a spectacle. If you want to handle legal, I’ll handle hearts. I’ll call the local feed, the people who came to our reception. I’ll get the town to back us up.”The plan was messy but it had geometry. We both moved — him to his lawyer, me to the kitchen where I wrote a quick note and put it into the town’s messaging board with a plea for calm and a promise of transparency. I called Juliette, Tom, Elena; within an hour the inn felt like a rallying center rather than a target. People who’d eaten jam on our porch wrote messages of support online. The town feed filled with They’re ours instead of There’s a scandal!But the internet runs faster than breakfast gossip. By noon the story had been picked up by a national outlet that loved scandal more than nuance. A TV van idled on the lane like a predatory beast. The inn’s phone would not stop ringing. An unfamiliar photographer took a long lens shot t

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

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

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.