Semua Bab My Precocious Triplets Brought me a Husband For Christmas : Bab 11 - Bab 20

"Are you staying for dinner?”Stephanie couldn’t stop herself from asking the question.She knew it the moment it popped out of her mouth... too wide open, too vulnerable, too private for something she hadn’t intended to reveal. Her hand was still on the fridge door, her fingers wrapped around the handle, her body halfway turned toward the counter as though she was still trying to convince herself, or perhaps him, that she hadn’t really said anything.She didn't turn around right away.She needed a second. Just one. To let the question be without panic hurrying after it. To listen to how it felt in the air ... mundane, offhand, sensible, and not like a tiny confession, as it was.Behind her, the kitchen fell silent.Peter paused.He was standing near the table, jacket tossed over the back of a chair, files arranged between them in orderly, painstaking rows. He had not yet begun packing up. Not yet. But on the other hand, he hadn’t gone for solace. He lives in that liminal space betwe

The house seemed too quiet, not empty...no, never empty but settled. As if something had exhaled in relief, and now as if to hold its breath to see what would happen next.Peter lingered at the sink longer than he need have, gazing at a mug he’d already rinsed. He was that close to starting. He didn’t turn it off. Didn’t notice until Stephanie reached past him and turned off the tap.“You are going to flood the place,” softly said she.Her sleeve touched his wrist.Peter flinched...not away from her, but inward. It was like something had moved that shouldn’t have.“Sorry,” he murmured.Stephanie didn’t step back. She instead leaned back against the counter, arms loosely folded, watching him the way she had been watching him lately curious and just… attentive.The children were asleep. He was sure of it. Bryan had proclaimed it at full volume, Perry had feigned resistance until noise ceased five minutes later. Tyler had made his way back upstairs with a book, as if the day had drained

The power cut off with a sigh then nothing —breathless.One moment the house was humming...the refrigerator, the clock, the distant whir of the furnace and the next darkness swallowed it all. The rain was not stopping for this. It remained beating against the roof, now heavier, determined, to the type that squashes the earth in one, very small dot.“...okay?” Peter’s voice echoed down the hall. Stephanie came to a halt, one hand on the kitchen counter, the other still clutching her phone. The screen glowed fatuously before going dark. “Yes,” she said. “Just… the power’s out.”Thunder rolled slowly and close. The lights were not flickering back on.“Breaker?” Peter inquired.“Storm,” she answered. “It happens.”She put the phone down and exhaled, longer than required, as if to steady herself. The cease-and-desist letter lay on the table where she’d left it, folded once, then twice. It was not here that morning. It had come in late morning, crisp and polite and lethal in only that way

The first crack didn’t occur in the courtroom.It happened in Stephanie’s inbox at 5:12 a.m. when a document she had been waiting on for weeks finally arrived and instead of the resistance she had thought would follow, it was clean. Uncontested. Logged. Timestamped.Coffee cooling, she stared at the screen, uninterested, unfulfilled and feeling nervous.“That’s new,” she murmured.The house was still asleep. The previous night’s storm had burned itself out, leaving a quiet so profound it seemed deserved. Stephanie scrolled slowly, carefully, as if sudden movement might make the evidence disappear.Internal access logs.Private review authorizations.Early queries connected to Catalina’s legal team ... queries made before public disclosure, before family notifications, before the accident had even been fully processed.Stephanie leaned back.“So you didn’t just know,” she whispered to the empty kitchen. “You actually planned everything.”She closed the file and opened another.And anot

The door closed softly behind her, too softly for her to hear how she felt. Stephanie paused for a moment, one hand still hovering near the handle, the other pressed flat against her chest, bracing for something to grab hold of her before the weight arrived.Nothing did.Her breath came out wrong. It wasn’t a sob. It was not a sigh. Like an emoticon between two exclamation marks and a period that rusted on its way out.She went two steps into the silence hall just outside the mediation suite, then stopped. The walls seemed to be drawing nearer here, the ceiling was lower, the air was thicker. Her heels clicked once as she moved, the noise so loud it made her jump.It was over.Not finished, not resolved. But done enough so that she’d kept herself intact through the last exchange, through the polite nods, through the final signatures that had never felt final.Through Catalina’s calm, deliberate voice as she leaned back in her chair and said,“Ms. Bakquet, given your history, I hope