บททั้งหมดของ Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : บทที่ 111 - บทที่ 116

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