All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S LOST FAMILY: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Nancy’s POVThe header alone made my stomach drop.IN THE MATTER OF: LIAM JACOBS-KING — PETITION FOR SOLE LEGAL AND PHYSICAL CUSTODYPetitioner: Andrew James King Respondent: Nancy Elaine JacobsThe words that followed were dense and formal and cold in the way that legal language always is, deliberately draining the humanity out of a situation that had nothing but humanity in it. I forced myself to read through it.Andrew was filing for sole legal and physical custody of Liam, citing instability and insecurity in the respondent's living situation, introduction of a romantic partner into the child's environment, and the respondent's alleged emotional volatility.Those were all thing he was saying about me!He had a lawyer. A good one, judging by the letterhead. There was a court date already scheduled.My hands were shaking by the time I folded the letter back along its crease. The room was so silent that I could the blood flowing through my own veins. I felt like I was dreaming. I di

Catherine’s POVThe visitor came at past eleven.He didn’t come through the front door of the estate nor at the main entrance where my staff would intercept him and send whoever it was away. It came at the side entrance, the one only a handful of people knew existed, which meant whoever was on the other side had been watching this house long enough to know where I came and went unaccompanied.That alone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up before I even opened the door.I had been in my private sitting room, nursing a glass of red wine and going over projections for the American expansion with half my attention and spending the other half thinking about what to do about Colton. My brother's silence had become its own kind of threat lately. He knew too much and cared too little about protecting his family, which made him unpredictable, and dangerous.I set my glass down when I saw a man I never wanted to see again through the security cameras, knocking aimlessly at the side e

Nancy’s POVWe had finished eating and my mother had gone back upstairs to rest, and Colton and I were at the sink doing the washing up together, his hands soapy, mine drying, talking about nothing in particular. He was telling me something about the perfume launch timeline, something about the Manchester contacts, and I was half-listening and half-watching the light in the garden, and it was ordinary and good and completely, peacefully unremarkable.He glanced at me from time to time, giving me smiles that made my stomach flip. Then suddenly we heard the doorbell and then the post came through the letterbox in the hall.We both heard it, the small clatter and flutter of things falling onto the mat, and neither of us moved immediately. Colton finished the mug he was washing, handed it to me, and then dried his hands on the tea towel and went to collect it.I kept drying. I heard him pick things up, heard the soft sorting sound of someone flipping through envelopes. There was a long, a

Nancy’s POVColton and I looked at each other.We took the stairs two at a time.She was in the corner of the third-floor landing, curled up behind a stack of old wooden pallets like she had tried to disappear into the wall.She was so small.That was all I could think. She was so small. She had on a dirty yellow dress and one shoe. Her braids were half undone and her knees were pulled to her chest. There was a long scrape down her shin, crusted with dried blood, and a purple bruise on her forearm. Her face was streaked with tears and dust.She looked like she could be six years old.My chest cracked wide open."Hi, sweetheart," I whispered, and I got down on my knees right there in the dirt. I didn't move closer. I kept my hands where she could see them. "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."She stared at me with huge brown eyes. She didn't scream and she didn't run. She just looked at me with the exhausted patience of a child who had been waiting a very long time."Are you the peo

Nancy’s POVDr. Abernathy arrived at eight, a stooped gray man with a leather bag who had once treated me for a concussion Colton caused and had the good sense never to mention it. He examined Hannah in the guest bathroom with the door half open, talking to her in a low, easy voice about nothing at all. She sat on the closed toilet lid in one of my old T-shirts, which came down past her knees, and answered his questions with a careful, "Yes, sir," and "No, sir."He cleaned the scrape on her shin and dressed it. He checked the bruise on her arm and decided it was only a bruise. He had her follow his finger with her eyes and open her mouth and count to ten."Dehydrated," he told us afterward, in the hallway, keeping his voice low. "Underfed, but not chronically. Somebody has been looking after this girl until very recently, and well. She's clean. She has good teeth. Whatever happened, it happened recently." He paused. "I won't ask where she came from. My work with Mr. Colton Earnshaw re