All Chapters of Not Your Typical Live-In Son-In-Law: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Julian’s phone buzzed once.No ringtone. No vibration pattern he recognized. Just a single buzz and a blank screen. No number. No contact name.Only a single message:"Five p.m. — The quiet corner table, Arcturus Café. I’ll be wearing gray. No escorts. No weapons. Just conversation." — M. QuellHe stared at it for a moment.Then turned the screen off.At 4:55 p.m., Julian stepped into Arcturus Café, a quiet, under-lit coffeehouse tucked between two aging brownstones in the quiet end of Westbridge’s arts district.Exposed brick walls. Reclaimed wood tables. Vintage lamps with Edison bulbs hanging like warm punctuation marks.It wasn’t a power place. It was a neutral place—chosen by someone who knew what that meant.He scanned the room. Saw her instantly.Gray wool coat. Smooth posture. No bag. No jewelry. A tablet case beside a single, untouched cup of tea. She didn’t look up as he approached.Julian slid into the seat opposite her, setting down a plain black folder. He wore no tie. J

Mirra Quell hated noise.That’s why she was always the one sent in after someone else’s recklessness. She cleaned. Silently. Precisely.This time, she was cleaning up Crane’s own mess.The Dunlake sabotage was supposed to be elegant: misrouted goods, plausible deniability, delayed audit trails. A dirty move cloaked in logistics.Instead?Julian Ward had caught it on foot. No lawyers. No aides. Just walked in and gutted the scheme with a calm voice and a camera phone.And worse?He never said a word to the press.That was Julian’s real weapon.He let the world chase its own rumors.Inside a private media agency downtown—three floors above a yoga studio that served alkaline water and lies—Mirra stood over a whiteboard filled with circles, arrows, and names.A young analyst leaned over a laptop nearby.“They’ve already locked the statement,” he said. “Lancaster’s PR team framed it as an internal audit discovery. No mention of Crane. No lawsuit. Just a ‘supplier anomaly.’”“Smart,” Mirra

She arrived on a Wednesday.No press.No fanfare.No announcement.Just stepped off a 4:15 p.m. regional train at Westbridge Central Station, wearing a slate coat, sunglasses, and a duffel bag slung over one shoulder.Her name was Elena Cross.Age: 34. Occupation: Private compliance contractor. Last known city: Detroit. Last known affiliation: None that mattered. And ten years ago, she’d worked with Julian Ward at Southwest FreightLink.For exactly 11 months.They hadn’t spoken since.Not once.Not until three days ago, when her burner phone rang in the middle of an empty motel room. No caller ID. No voice recognition.Just the words:“He remembers you. That’s why you matter.”Then: a digital ticket. A hotel reservation. A contact name—Mirra Quell.Mirra met Elena at a corner table in a shadow-lit diner off West 6th Avenue. Neither of them touched the coffee."You’re wondering why I brought you here," Mirra said."No," Elena replied. "I’m wondering what you think I can do.”Mirra

The first headline appeared less than twelve hours after dinner."Julian Ward’s Mysterious Dinner Guest: Ghosts From the Past?"It wasn't from a major outlet—just a second-tier online blog that masqueraded as a business watch site. But it was slick. Professional. Someone had fed them the name Elena Cross, and it wasn’t hard to dress up the optics. A single wide-shot image taken through a lens from three buildings away showed Julian opening the Lancaster estate’s front door for Elena as she left.The article didn’t accuse.It suggested.It asked where she came from. Why she was staying in town. And why someone as strategically silent as Julian Ward had brought an unknown woman to the estate without explanation.It was classic Crane work. Elegant sabotage through innuendo. No attack. Just a quiet cut where the skin was soft.Julian read the piece before sunrise, sitting in the dark at the edge of the estate’s south garden, tablet in one hand, coffee cooling beside him. He didn’t react

It started with an anonymous file upload.No message.No timestamp metadata.No traceable IP.But Sophie caught it anyway—hidden in the back end of a Lancaster-owned server mirror used only for routine invoice audits. A ghost folder marked “grey.mosaic”, buried beneath ten layers of innocuous filenames.She opened it.And found one document.Four pages. Encrypted. Signed only with a pseudonym:—Horizon.She didn’t open it right away.Instead, she walked it straight to Julian, who was in the northeast wing’s quiet drawing room, cataloging foreign contract replicas.When she handed him the flash drive, she didn’t say anything. Just arched one eyebrow.Julian plugged it in without asking.And read.The document didn’t contain accusations.It held evidence.Internal ledger exports from one of Crane’s European sub-holdings. A list of unfiled transactions, matched against manipulated timestamps. But the real story sat in the attached PDF—a floor plan of Crane’s Tier 3 node facility outsid