All Chapters of The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride: Chapter 71 - Chapter 78

Elena POV~•~I waited until the house had gone quiet before I made the call, the study door shut, the lamp the only light on.Hale picked up on the fourth ring, her voice thick with sleep. “Do you know what time it is?”“I know exactly what time it is,” I said. “I also know about a man named Bauer who bought forty thousand dollars of your debt three years ago, then sold it on to someone you’ve never met. You know who that someone is, Dolores. I’m guessing the court doesn’t.”Silence on the line, the kind that told me I’d landed it clean.“I don’t know what you think you have,” she said, but the sleep was gone from her voice now.“I have bank records. I have the transfer chain. I have the name at the end of it, and the name is the same one funding the petition you’ve been assigned to evaluate.” I kept my tone even, the way I would in a deposition. “You walk into that house next week and you write what you see. A healthy child, a stable home, two parents who love him. You write it hone

VIVIENNE~•~I kept my hand in his and didn’t let go, and for once I didn’t pick it apart, didn’t ask myself what it meant or what it’d cost me later. It just felt good. His thumb moved over my knuckles, slow, and down the yard Liam was telling his beetle which way to walk, dead serious, like the bug was taking notes.We sat there a minute longer than we needed to. He still had my hand from before, and I kept waiting for the part of me that always pulls back from this to kick in and take it away. It didn’t show up. After a year of bracing for the next bad thing, sitting on a cold step holding somebody’s hand felt almost too easy.“Bedtime in ten, baby,” I called.“Five more minutes.”“Ten. Then teeth.”He groaned the way he always groaned, and next to me Damon laughed under his breath, low in his chest, and I felt it more than heard it.We got Liam down together. He made Damon check the closet for the third night running, and Damon did it without making it a thing, opened the door, lo

VIVIENNE~•~He flipped the first pancake too high on purpose and Liam lost his whole mind over it, syrup everywhere, the kid yelling do it again, do it again, and a billionaire who restructured companies before breakfast stood there showing off with a spatula for a six-year-old.Then his phone buzzed on the counter. He turned it face-down before I could see the screen and kept flipping like nothing happened. I clocked it and said nothing.“Two days,” I said, once Liam carried his plate off to the table. “Hale comes Thursday.”“Thursday.” Damon scraped the pan. “We’ll be ready.”“Will we? You’ve been somewhere else all morning. You keep checking that phone like it owes you money.”“Work.” He didn’t turn around. “It’s always work. You know that.”It was a good answer. Smooth, fast, the kind I’d have bought a week ago.~•~Elena ran the prep again that afternoon, the two of us at the dining table with her legal pad while Liam napped upstairs.“She’ll want the house relaxed,” Elena said.

VIVIENNE~•~"I'm not waking him." My voice was shaking and I let it shake. "He's sick, he's finally asleep, and you are not getting near my son tonight.""Mrs. Langford." Hale sounded bored. "You can wake him yourself, nice and gentle, or I write down that the mother wouldn't let the child be seen. Think hard about how that reads to a judge in the morning.""Then write it!" It came out too loud and I didn't care. "Write that I wouldn't let a stranger pull my sick kid out of bed at nine at night. Let's see how that one reads for you.""Dolores, please." Elena's voice was tight, the lawyer in her trying to pull it back from the edge. "It's late, everyone's worn out. We can do the visit in the morning, the way the order says, after we all get some sleep. Nobody's helping their case tonight.""I decide when the visit happens, counselor. Not you.""You came a day early, at night, with no notice." Damon's voice was flat and cold. "That's not how an assessment works and you know it. I can h