جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 200

Eleanor's POV I hadn't been inside a courtroom in over fifteen years, not since I'd legally died and left my old life behind, and walking into this family court to defend my son and his wife felt like stepping into a nightmare I'd helped create by being absent for so long. The room was smaller than I expected, nothing like the grand courtrooms you see on television. Just a modest space with wood paneling and fluorescent lights that buzzed faintly overhead, rows of benches for observers, a raised platform for the judge. Lucas sat at one table with his lawyer, a young woman in a severe black suit who looked like she'd missed several nights of sleep preparing for this. I sat alone at the other table with a stack of files Patricia Rodriguez had given me before rushing off to handle another emergency, trusting me to represent her clients because their actual clients couldn't be here. Scarlet was in the hospital at twenty-five weeks, confined to a bed she couldn't leave without risking pr

Damian's Pov Eleanor's call came through while I was reading to Scarlet from a book neither of us could focus on, some thriller with a plot that kept slipping through my concentration like water."The judge wants Jace brought to court," Eleanor said without preamble, her voice tight with stress that immediately made my stomach drop. "She wants to speak with him directly."Scarlet was already sitting up as much as she could without triggering alarms, her hand reaching for the phone I was holding."What happened? Why does she need to see him?"I put the call on speaker so she could hear Eleanor explain about Savannah's testimony, about the lies she'd told under oath claiming Scarlet had been violent and unstable, about Michael's written statement painting her as manipulative and obsessive. With each word Scarlet's face got paler and I watched the monitor start showing stress responses, her heart rate climbing."I need you to bring him," Eleanor finished. "Thomas can pick him up from sc

Lucas's POVThe bailiffs threw me out of the courthouse like I was garbage, their hands rough on my arms as they hauled me down the steps and deposited me on the sidewalk where photographers immediately swarmed with their cameras flashing and their shouted questions blending into meaningless noise.I'd lost.Again.Not just lost custody but had my visitation reduced to two hours a month, had been held in contempt of court, had screamed and raged in front of reporters who were now capturing every second of my humiliation for tomorrow's headlines.My lawyer quit before I'd even made it to my car, sending a terse text that said she could no longer represent me due to my behavior and wished me luck finding new counsel. My business partners had been calling all morning, every one of them with the same message delivered in increasingly cold tones—we need to distance ourselves from you, this association is becoming toxic, perhaps it's best if we dissolve our partnership.Everything was falli

Damian's POVScarlet was laughing, actually laughing for the first time in days, and the sound of it made something in my chest unclench that I hadn't realized was wound so tight."Stop," she said through her giggles, trying to push my hand away from where I'd been tracing patterns on her palm. "That tickles.""You're supposed to be relaxing. This is relaxing," I said and pinched her cheeks. "This is torture." But she was smiling, her fingers intertwining with mine despite her protests. "The good kind though."We'd been confined to this hospital room for so long that we'd developed strange little rituals to pass the time, and this was one of them—me sitting on the edge of her bed finding small ways to touch her that didn't involve medical equipment or monitors, her pretending to be annoyed while clearly enjoying the contact."We're finally at thirty weeks," I said, brushing a strand of hair back from her face. "Dr. Kim said if the babies came now they'd have an eighty-five percent su

Scarlet's POVThe hospital at three in the morning had its own particular quality of silence, broken only by the steady beeping of monitors tracking my vitals and the twins' heartbeats, the occasional footsteps of nurses doing their rounds, the distant hum of machinery keeping this whole building alive.I'd been drifting in that space between sleep and waking for hours, unable to fully surrender to either because my back ached and the babies were pressing on my ribs and every position felt wrong after weeks of being confined to this bed.Damian was asleep in his chair, finally, his head tilted at an angle that was going to make his neck hurt when he woke up but I didn't have the heart to disturb him. He'd been running on maybe four hours of sleep a night since the security threats started, constantly vigilant even with the guards posted outside our door.I must have finally fallen asleep at some point because I woke to the sound of Damian moving around the room, trying to be quiet."W