All Chapters of In Bed With My Fiancé’s Father: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

Kane's POVThe room tilted around me."What are you talking about." My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, thin and strange in my own ears. "Mother. What about the night I was born."She wouldn't look at me. Her eyes stayed fixed on her own hands, twisting together in her lap, and for the first time in my entire life I watched my mother — poised, controlled, endlessly composed — come apart at the seams in front of a room full of strangers."Your father wasn't in the city when you were born," she said finally. "He was supposed to be. He'd promised me he would be. But there was a deal closing that week, the mill deal, the one that made his first real fortune, and he chose it over being in that delivery room." Her voice cracked. "I was alone, Kane. Terrified, twenty-four years old, and completely alone, and there was someone else there instead. Someone who happened to be at the hospital that night, who sat with me for six hours because your father couldn't be bothered to leav

Kane's POVForty-eight hours felt like a fucking freaking while lifetime.I threw myself into damage control instead of sitting still with it board calls, statements, three separate meetings with outside counsel about the fallout from the leak. The company's stock had dropped eleven percent and was still sliding, but for the first time since my father died, I didn't feel like I was drowning in his mess. I felt like I was finally cleaning it up on my own terms.Celeste stayed close the whole two days, working from my penthouse instead of her apartment, the press crews still camped outside her building even after the story had moved on to other headlines. I liked having her there more than I probably should have admitted out loud. Liked waking up and finding her already at the kitchen counter with coffee and her sketchbook, like the last two days hadn't happened at all.It was the third morning when Jim knocked on the bedroom door before I'd even finished getting dressed."Boss. It's h

Kane's POVCeleste didn't try to talk me out of going alone. She just pressed a kiss to my jaw at the door, her hand lingering on my chest a beat longer than usual, and said, "Bishop. If anything feels wrong.""Bishop," I agreed.The park behind the old courthouse was empty at midnight, streetlamps throwing pools of orange light across wet pavement, the city's noise reduced to a distant hum beyond the trees. I found the bench exactly where he said it would be, and the man sitting on it looked smaller than I remembered him — shoulders curved inward, hands loosely folded, none of the polished confidence I'd known my entire life."You came alone," he said, not looking up."I said I would.""Your father used to say that too. And mean it about half the time." A faint, humorless smile crossed his face. "I suppose you're better than him already, in that respect."I sat down at the far end of the bench, leaving space between us that felt necessary, though I couldn't have said exactly why. "Te

Kane's POVMy mother read the message over my shoulder, and the sound she made was something between a sob and a laugh, both hands flying to her mouth."Three blocks," she whispered. "Kane, she's been three blocks away this entire time.""We don't know anything about her life yet. Her situation. Whether she even wants to know any of this." I kept my voice careful, even though my own pulse was racing just as hard as hers. "We can't just show up at her office and upend her whole world in one afternoon.""Then how," my mother said. "How do we even begin."Edmund cleared his throat quietly from where he still stood near the door, hands folded, clearly unsure whether he still belonged in the room at all. "If I may. I still have contacts from my old life who specialize in exactly this kind of situation — quiet verification, careful approach, nothing that spooks anyone or ends up in the press before the family's ready." He glanced at me. "I'd like to help, if you'll let me. It's a small thin

Kane's POVI turned the phone around so Jim could read it himself.Whatever I expected — denial, anger, the careful deflection of a man caught off guard — wasn't what I got. Jim's face went pale, then strangely, terribly calm, the way a man's face goes still right before he finally sets down a weight he's been carrying too long to remember what it felt like to stand up straight."I was there," he said quietly. "The night your father died."The room went dead silent."What do you mean you were there." My voice came out low, dangerous, nothing like the steady control I'd been clinging to for the last four days. "Jim. You told me you found him. You told me you were the one who called the ambulance.""I did find him. I did call the ambulance." His jaw worked, old grief surfacing in a face that had never once shown me anything but careful competence in eleven years of knowing him. "I just never told you I was already in the house when it happened. That I was standing in the hallway outside