Semua Bab MARRIED TO MY EX-FATHER IN LAW.: Bab 81 - Bab 90

Willow's POV I hear it from Katerina Volkov over lunch. She drops it the way women in this world drop everything important... buried inside small talk, wrapped in fake pleasantries, and slid across the restaurant table between the bread and the main course like it’s nothing. Like she isn’t watching my face for the exact reaction I’m trying so hard not to give her. “I heard the Moretti household has some exciting news,” Katerina says, lifting her wine glass. “A baby, apparently. The young wife.” I pick up my fork, set it down and pick it up again. “Is that right,” I say. “Mmm. Word came through last night. You know how fast these things travel.” She watches me over the rim of her glass. Katerina has always enjoyed other people’s pain in that classy, polished way some women do. Elegant cruelty. The kind that doesn’t leave bruises. “I imagine that changes things a lot, a child makes everything so much more permanent.” “It does,” I agree. My voice comes out exactly how

Lola's POV I threw up this morning at six-fifteen, and by seven I was already eating toast and feeling totally fine. Honestly, that pretty much sums up the first trimester. It comes in waves, that’s the part nobody really warns you about. You don’t feel sick all day, you feel completely normal, then bam... it hits you out of nowhere. Twenty minutes later you’re fine again and low-key annoyed at your own body for the drama. Miriam says it’s a good sign, strong hormones, everything’s developing the way it should. I’ve started taking her word for it without spiralling into worst-case scenarios and that’s new for me. Trusting that good news is actually good news and not just the calm before something awful shows up. I’m working on it, three months in. I stand sideways in the bathroom mirror after my shower and check myself out properly. There’s a small curve now. Barely noticeable, you wouldn’t see it unless you already knew. But I know, and Ocean definitely knows. He spots eve

Lola’s POV Your father’s name was Marcus Chen, the words hit me like a truck. The restaurant doesn’t stop, forks keep scraping plates. People keep talking low. The sommelier still glides between tables with some fancy bottles. Everything keeps moving like normal, but inside me? Everything freezes. “What did you say?” My voice comes out all wrong...thin, shaky, like I’m scared of my own words. Willow gives me that look, the soft one, the worried one. The one that’s actually the scariest thing in this whole damn room right now. “Marcus Chen,” she says again, real quiet. Like she’s the one breaking bad news she never wanted to say out loud. “Your dad. That was his name before they put you in the system, before they changed it to Brown.” “I know what my father’s damn name was.” The words shoot out before I can stop them. And true. I’ve always known, Lola Chen who turned into Lola Brown at nine years old in some dusty social worker’s office with beige walls and a sad plant nobo

Lola's POV Yes. One single word. That’s all it took to blow my entire world apart. I’ve been rolling that “yes” around in my head the whole time since I left the restaurant. Since I turned my back on Ocean on that cold pavement, climbed into the car with Ezra, and muttered “take me home.” I sat in the back seat for twenty whole minutes just staring at my hands while London blurred past the windows like nothing fucking happened. Like my life didn’t just get flipped upside down. One word, and everything changed. When we finally get back to the house, I go straight upstairs. I hear Hannah calling my name from somewhere downstairs, all worried. I don’t stop, I can’t. I don’t have it in me to talk right now, to force words out and make them sound normal. I feel like I’m barely holding myself together. I walk into our bedroom and just stand there in the middle of it. Our bedroom, his room. The place where this whole arrangement stopped feeling fake and turned into something real a

Lola's POV I hear him walk away from the door. His footsteps echo down the hallway, getting quieter and quieter until they disappear completely. He actually left, I told him to go away and he listened. I should feel relieved, I should finally be able to breathe now that there’s space between us. But I don’t feel any of that, just this heavy, aching emptiness. I pull the blanket tighter around me and stare at the wall, listening to the big house settle into its nighttime sounds. The low hum of the heating, a door closing somewhere downstairs, wind rattling against the windows, all those little noises that add up to silence. His house. I’m lying here in his bed, in his house, carrying his child… and he’s the one who killed my father. I close my eyes tight. I think about my mom, Suki Brown. She went back to her maiden name after my dad died, like some quiet way of pulling herself away from the dangerous world he was caught up in. I think about that now, she must’ve known some