Lahat ng Kabanata ng Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Kabanata 151 - Kabanata 160

Court mornings always smell the same to me now — a mix of stale coffee and paper warmed under florescent lights — but today the smell seemed smaller, more manageable. Maybe that was the ring on my finger, or Rupert’s letters sitting in counsel’s briefcases like small, righteous anchors. Maybe it was the fact that I’d practiced my answers until the edges of the facts felt like something I could hold in my hand.Marcus was quiet as we rode in. He reached for my hand and didn’t let go even when the valet took our car. The courthouse steps rose like an altar; for a second the world narrowed to marble and breath. I felt Agnes’s palm at the small of my back when she met us, solid as a blessing. Nora waved from across the square with the kind of grin that meant she’d baked something we didn’t need but would make the day sweeter anyway. The town had decided to show up in its own, stubborn way.We were led into the in-camera room — smaller than the courtroom, heavier with secrecy. The judge en

The morning after the judge’s order felt like waking to a room that had been swept clean — not because everything was solved, but because the dust was sorted into piles you could actually carry. I rolled over and found Marcus already at the kitchen island, his tie loosened, a stack of papers in front of him like small flags of war. He looked up when I padded in, and the sight of him — still disheveled, still beautifully ordinary — flattened the sharp edges of the week for a beat.“You look like a man who slept once and decided it was a good idea,” I said, because teasing is a kind of prayer we use when the world gets ugly.“I am a man making amends to the world by not being dramatic before breakfast,” he shot back, handing me coffee like an offering. His thumb brushed mine and the contact felt like a covenant.We spent the morning in the steady, precise way heroes on paper never do: calls with counsel to schedule the next filings, an update from the county clerk (they’d archived Ruper

There are mornings that feel like apologies in sunlight — quiet, warm, forgiving — and I stole one of those the day it all started to fray. Marcus woke with his usual ridiculous grin, hair an articulate mess, and brought me coffee in bed like it was a small coronation. The twins were doing the polite thing inside me — a soft, insistent flutter that felt like permission to be hopeful.“We have pancakes to defend later,” he said, voice still coarse from sleep.“I live to defend pancakes,” I answered, because small vows are how we keep our center. He kissed me then, slow and sure, and for a breath the world felt like a room built only for us.We ate on the terrace, the city a distant hum, Juliette practicing scales somewhere in the inn as if sound could stitch things together. The morning was ordinary enough to taste like a promise: lists made and folded, a walk through the nursery to rearrange books we’d already read twice, a plan for the afternoon — counsel to review Rupert’s letters a

The morning after our fight felt like a bruise: present but healing, tender if you pressed the wrong part of the day. Marcus had been up before dawn—something about the leak had kept him wired—but when I padded into the kitchen he was already there, tie loosened, hands busy with two steaming mugs. He offered me one without comment and it was enough; caffeine and him were the small, practical armor I needed.“Counsel traced the press leak to an intermediary,” he said, as if that sentence would settle the whole world. The way his voice steadied when he talked about facts had become one of my quiet comforts. “Not Kells directly. An external consultant. But the IP hops lead back to a subnet that shows up on Kells’ invoice trail.”My stomach did a small, traitorous somersault. “So they’re trying to make it look like Kells was the puppeteer and then pull strings from somewhere else?”“Yes,” Marcus said. He folded his hands like a man gathering himself for something that needed precision. “I

Dawn at the boathouse smelled like river cold and old wood — the kind of cold that makes you feel honest because you don’t have the energy to carry anything else. I wrapped my coat around me tighter than I needed, more for the ritual of protection than actual warmth, and slipped down the lane toward the water. The note had said dawn. R had always been an old-fashioned sort of conspirator; the timing felt right.The boathouse door creaked when I pushed it open, complaining like an old friend. Inside, the light was a thin gutter from the windows, and the river was a flat sheet of pewter. Someone had left a tin of coffee on a folding camp stove — practical and oddly intimate. I heard a step and turned.He wasn’t what I expected. Not the stately sort you imagine with family names and trusts. He was smaller than I’d pictured, wrapped in an old fisherman’s coat, throat creased by years of wind. His hair was all silver and sensible, and his eyes had the sharpness of someone who’d learned to