All Chapters of Her Father’s Billionaire Best Friend : Chapter 181 - Chapter 189

There’s a kind of wildness to the days when the story starts to chest-pump and the world finally listens. The inn felt like a threshing floor: neighbors came and went with casseroles and gossip, counsel buzzed like a careful wasp, and the twins under my ribs practiced their impatient percussion as if they knew big things were moving. I woke with the sun in my face and Marcus beside me, still asleep, mouth a little open, one hand flexed as if it was holding a future.I lay there a long time just watching him — memorizing the planes of his jaw, the way a sleep-line softened at his brow. He is my ridiculous northern star: flawed, enormous, the man who can arrange armies in a phone call and then burn pancakes with such ceremony that even the burned parts feel like gifts. There was something tender and ferocious in the idea of him: a man who would break himself to keep me safe and who would rebuild the pieces with plaster and poetry, if it came to that.We didn’t pretend the war was over.

There’s a strange calm right before the endgame — not the empty silence of surrender but the hush of people inhaling together, getting ready to push. I woke with that hush inside me, the twins doing quiet somersaults like little drumrolls, and Marcus already up, sleeves rolled, eyes on the schedule like a man reading a battle map. Today Pryce would be cross-examined. Reed would be watching. The judge had given teeth to the process; the country’s newspapers were beginning to sniff the real story instead of the manufactured pity-play. We were finally moving from defense to offense.We dressed like conspirators in the mundane: jeans, soft sweaters, the little things that make a marriage look lived-in instead of staged. He kissed me in the kitchen — quick, fierce, the kind of kiss that stitches armor to skin — and then we were out the door with Rupert at our shoulders and a town-sized bouquet of goodwill trailing behind us. Agnes pressed a paper-wrapped scone into my hand with the austere

That night we agreed: no deal that let Reed control the narrative. If they wanted closure, they’d have to accept rules that would make their PR people faint. If Reed refused, we’d let the criminal inquiry move forward. No buying of silence. No branding of our grief.Then the twist arrived like an anonymous email that landed on Marcus’s phone while we were still warm from each other. He glanced at it and his face went suddenly small and very private. He showed me the screen.The message was short, unsigned, and direct. There was a photo attached — a quick, grainy shot of Juliette’s violin case, leaning against the bench in the parlor, her small practice schedule tucked inside. The caption beneath the photo was worse: We can reach the things you love. We can make the world look kindly at a victim you choose. Settle quietly, and the music stays private. Refuse, and we make noise.For a second the room disappeared until all I could see was the case. I thought of Juliette’s tiny fingers, o

Afterwards, breath cooling and bodies blazing, he took my face in his hands. “Marry me again,” he said, ridiculous and perfect. “Not the big paper thing you had to endure with your father. A small one, here, now. Teal ribbons. Laughter. Promise me you’ll pick the jam.”My laugh turned into something like a sob. “We don’t need papers for promises,” I said. “But yes. Teal ribbons. Burned pancakes. Promise.”So we did — because endings in novels and life both deserve a little ceremony. We fetched a crooked mirror from the parlor, borrowed a teal ribbon from Juliette, and stood on the roof with the willow like a witness. Marcus spoke clumsy vows, half of them ridiculous, half of them exact. He promised to call counsel when necessary and to cook breakfast on days that mattered. I promised to be loud, to not let him carry things alone, to tell him when he was being a fool and to kiss him always after. Rupert declared himself officiant with a dignity he’d hidden for decades, and Agnes perfor