Lahat ng Kabanata ng Be With Three Daddies To Hurt My Ex: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 87

CANDICEThe envelope arrives on a Tuesday.It is thick, heavy, heavy, and in it is the satisfying weight of ammunition.My private investigator is thorough, I pay enough to ensure that, and the contents spread across my home office desk like everything I've been waiting for.The photographs, printed in high resolution, and timestamped.I go through them slowly. The first is Isabel and Ares Blackville outside a restaurant in the West Village, her face turned up to his, his hand at her jaw, their mouths meeting in an unhurried kiss that leaves absolutely nothing ambiguous.Timestamp: 10:47 PM. A Monday.The second makes my jaw tighten.Isabel leaves Marco De Santos's building at dawn light. Her hair slightly messed, wearing what's clearly his sweater, carrying her own shoes in one hand.Timestamp: 6:23 AM. A Saturday.The third is the one that makes me set down my wine glass. It is a private beach, and in the picture is Isabel and Harvey Smith. The fucking cold, hostile, barely-speaks-i

ISABELIt starts with a feeling, the particular prickling awareness of being observed that I've learned to recognize over the past months but this is different from Harvey's surveillance.Harvey's watching always felt like possession, dark and consuming but fundamentally protective. Like something circling to keep other things away.This feels like something circling to get closer. I noticed it first on a Tuesday morning.Walking to Blue Bottle for coffee, the familiar route I've taken dozens of times, I noticed a car parked on the opposite side of the street. A dark sedan, engine off, and nobody visible through the tinted windows.I notice it because it's there when I go in and still there when I come out fifteen minutes later.I tell myself it's nothing.Wednesday, the same car. Different street, same general vicinity of my office building.Friday, outside my gym.Three times in one week.I take a photograph on Friday. Discreetly. Just the car, no plates visible from my angle.The u

ISABELWe work through the night. By midnight, my kitchen table has transformed into a war room.Laptops open, phones face up. Legal pads covered in Marco's precise handwriting and Ares's more chaotic notes.Harvey sits apart from the others, not disconnected, just processing differently. He has three separate browser tabs open and hasn't said much in the last hour, which means he's thinking harder than anyone in the room."We need to respond," Marco says after what seems like an infinite silence, his voice controlled but carrying the edge of someone who has been managing his anger for several hours. "Staying silent reads as either guilt or weakness. Neither is acceptable.""Agreed," I say. "But the how matters. A written statement feels defensive like we're explaining ourselves, justifying ourselves and feeling damn guilty about our relationship.""Which is exactly what they want," Ares says. He's been monitoring social media commentary since the article dropped, his expression cycli