Lahat ng Kabanata ng MARRIED TO MY EX-FATHER IN LAW.: Kabanata 121 - Kabanata 130

Third Person . Michael makes the call at two in the afternoon. He's in a car on the M25, heading toward an exit that leads to a private airfield, which leads to a flight, which leads to a whole new life he's been building quietly for eleven years in a country that doesn't extradite. He has a passport under a different name, money in accounts that can't be touched, and a property outside Lisbon that's been sitting empty and ready for exactly this kind of day. He's been ready for this for a long time. The recording is out, the council is meeting. The walls are closing in the way he always knew they might if something went wrong at the wrong moment and Ocean got out before the six months were up. Something went wrong. Ocean got out. That's the one variable Michael couldn't fully control. He planned for most things, the escape contingency was there. But the recording hitting seven inboxes at the same time, before he even knew Ocean was mobile ... that was precise in a way that su

Ethan's POV She won't shoot. That's what I know as I move toward her. That's what I know for sure. Four years of marriage and I know Lola better than she knows herself. She will not pull that trigger. She's exhausted, she just gave birth, she's holding a baby, and her hands might look steady right now but they won't stay steady when it actually counts. She's never shot anyone. She's never done anything harder than survive. That's all she's ever been. Small and careful and built for putting up with shit, not for fighting back. She won't shoot. I'm certain of it right up until the second I'm not. The shot doesn't hit me. It goes wide, left, into the wall beside the window. But the sound of it in that small room stops me dead. She fired. Lola actually fired. I look at her. She's still sitting up in the bed, the baby tight against her chest with her left arm. The gun in her right hand, smoke in the air. The smell of it sharp in the room now. Her face. That's what stops me

Ocean's POV Ethan is in the hallway. Two of my men have him propped up against the wall. His shoulder is bleeding through his coat... Lola's shot. Clean. She put it exactly where it needed to go to stop him without killing him. I think about that for a second, about the woman in that room who gave birth eight hours ago, held a gun steady over her newborn, and fired without flinching. Ezra trained her well, she trained herself well. Ethan looks at me when I step out of the bedroom. His face is a mess from what happened in there. My hands specifically. He's conscious, barely, one eye swollen shut. Lip split, the shoulder wound still bleeding steady. He looks at me and something shifts in his face. Not fear, something older than fear. I stand there for a moment and just look at him. This man, my son. Twenty-seven years old, standing in a hallway in Kent with a bullet in his shoulder after coming here tonight to kill a newborn baby. My newborn baby. I think about the b

Third Person Ethan is processed at two in the morning. Not by the police, not by any official structure that would leave behind paperwork, hearings, and the whole performance of legitimate justice. No, this is handled by the men Ocean left behind at the cottage while he stayed in the bedroom with Lola and Storm. It’s the process this world uses when it needs to do its own accounting. He’s taken straight from the hallway floor to a waiting car. Then transferred to a property in South London that Daniel had identified three weeks earlier as a holding location, just in case one became necessary. He hadn’t known then exactly what it would end up holding. He’d prepared it anyway because Ocean had asked him to prepare for contingencies, and Ethan Moretti had been a contingency since the tribunal. The shoulder wound is dressed by a man who has done this kind of work before and who asks no questions about how the injury happened. It’s not serious. Lola’s shot had been precise in exactly t

Vincent's POV I drive to Guildford myself. No driver, and no captains. I considered bringing Sophia and decided against it. This is something I need to do alone...man to man, in the way certain things in this world still require, even now, even after everything that’s happened. The house is exactly the kind of property Daniel Russo would choose. Discreet, and comfortable. The sort of place that doesn’t announce what it’s protecting. A guard at the gate checks my identity even though he clearly already knows who I am. Procedure is procedure. I respect it more than I might have a year ago. Ocean comes to the door himself. He looks better than he did at the tribunal. Months of exile and a violent escape and everything since have left their marks, but something underneath all of it has settled. He looks like a man who got back something he thought he’d lost completely. “Vincent,” he says. “Ocean.” We stand there for a moment. Two men who have known each other for twenty years, sh