All Chapters of UNDESERVED ROMANCE WITH MR. BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

136 Chapters

Chapter 21: The Ghost Flight

We didn't take a private jet. We didn't take a town car.Bonny used his old connections to secure three tickets on a red-eye budget flight out of a tiny regional airport two hours north. We looked like any other family of travellers: an old man in a flannel shirt, a tired-looking pregnant woman in an oversized hoodie, and a man in a baseball cap with a three-month beard and a cheap duffel bag.As the small prop plane climbed into the dark sky, leaving the safety of the coast behind, the hum of the engines felt like a countdown.Richard sat next to me; his long legs cramped in the narrow seat. He had a legal pad on his tray table, covered in his sharp, slanted handwriting. He was drafting a counter-suit, a RICO filing that would tie the Hayes merger to a decade of systematic corporate fraud."They think I’m coming back to beg," Richard said, not looking up from the page. "They think I’m coming back to negotiate for a piece of the inheritance. They have no idea I’m coming back to burn t

Chapter 22: Fighting Back

"If we lose tomorrow, Richard," I mumbled into his chest, "I want you to know... I don't regret the diner. I don't regret the cabin."Richard pulled back just enough to look me in the eye, his expression fierce. "We aren't losing, Oma. I’m going to walk into that courtroom and I’m going to dismantle my father’s legacy brick by brick. I’m going to show the world exactly what a 'Jones' is capable of when he has something worth fighting for."The brownstone office was a tomb of forgotten grievances, filled with the scent of floor wax and the flickers of old litigation. Outside the tall, narrow windows, San Diego hummed with a grasping energy, the city lights flaming like the eyes of a beast waiting for dawn.Bonny had retreated to a small back alcove, ostensibly to check the boiler, but I knew he was giving us space. The silence between Richard and me was no longer the comfortable, salt-sprayed quiet of the cabin. It was charged, heavy with the electricity of the coming storm.I stood by

Chapter 23: The Clean Sweep

"Are you ready?" Richard asked.I’ve been a soldier’s daughter my whole life, Richard, I said with determination, my eyes meeting his with a newfound steel. It’s time I started acting like the commander. Richard smiled once again, and planted a light kiss on my forehead. “Then let’s go”.The Hall of Justice was a monolith of grey granite and glass, a cathedral of cold, unyielding authority. By 8:30 AM, the perimeter was already choked with news vans, their telescopic antennas reaching into the pale blue sky like the feelers of giant insects.Richard walked at my side, his stride long and certain. He had found a discarded suit in the back of Bonny’s office, a vintage, charcoal-grey wool that fit him with an almost spectral precision. He had shaved the beard, leaving only the sharp, lethal lines of his jaw and those steel-blue eyes that seemed to cut through the very marble of the hallway.I walked beside him, my hand resting on the swell of my eight-month-pregnant stomach. I wore a si

Chapter 24: The Proposal

“Don’t panic, you are in control,” Richard said squeezing my hand.“I know but I can’t help but feel a little bit scared.” I respondedHe patted my shoulder and said softly, “I understand but there is not much to worry about. My father is going to understand today that I was properly trained for the courtroom, and since he has decided to defy family for status, he is going in for it pronto.When the court reassembled, Judge Halloway looked at me for a long time. Then, she looked at the folder Richard had placed on her desk, the evidence of the fraud, the drugging, and the Hayes family’s corruption."The petition for conservatorship," Judge Halloway said, her gavel hovering, "is denied. Furthermore, in light of the evidence presented by Mr. Hamman and Mr. Jones, I am referring the Hayes and Jones merger to the District Attorney for a full criminal investigation into corporate racketeering and crime assault."Crack.The gavel came down like the hammer of God.The courtroom exploded into

Chapter 25: The Night Does Not End

When we walked out of the courtroom. The flashbulbs and the reporters hampered around Richard and I, calling his name. His hand was on my back, steering me forward through the small crowd of news reporters.Thank God we were at the winning side in the courtroom.While we moved towards our car. Immediately, I felt a slight pain below my abdomen, like a fist closing around something. I had been feeling it a bit since the recess, breathing through it on the witness stand.My pregnancy was barely nine months. So, I never felt this pain could be labor.I pressed my palm flat against my stomach and ignored it, saying it was nothing as we continued walking.The drive back to Bonny's brownstone was calm. Richard was on the phone with Ned, already moving to the next problem. That was Richard, he simply processed things by moving forward. I used to think it was cold of him, but now I know better. It was how he kept from falling apart.Boston the driver, drove with both hands on the wheel. His

Chapter 26: The Paper War

They came for me on a Tuesday.I was still in the hospital, forty-eight hours after my baby was born. Richard was with his coffee and whatever Bonny brought twice a day in a paper bag for him. Our daughter slept in the bassinet beside my bed, her chest rising and falling, completely unbothered by the world.The nurse who came to check my blood pressure that morning had a tablet tucked under her arm. She set it on the counter, reached for the pressure cuff, and I saw the screen.I saw the headline.‘A billionaire’s baby has just been delivered’The nurse noticed me reading through her phone screen as she deliberately dropped the phone feeling embarrassed of my intrusion."I need to see that," I said."Miss Johnson…""Please. I need to see it."She handed the phone over to me.I held it and read the news twice.The news appeared from two exclusive sources. I read their brand’s name in the third paragraph and felt triggered.‘Tasha Davies and Franklin Miller?In the report she talked abo

CHAPTER 27: The Stolen Clause

Richard had been carrying something for two weeks.I noticed it because I knew him. There's a certain kind of quietness that means a man is working through a problem, and there's a different kind that means he's carrying something he hasn't figured out how to hand over yet. Richard had not been himself since the night our daughter was born.I didn't push to know what's wrong but I know he would tell me. On a Sunday morning, he called for me. Our daughter was asleep in the bassinet. Richard sat down across from me at the table, pushed his mug to the side, and looked at me straight into my eyes."I need to tell you something," he said.I put my mug down. "Okay.""I should've told you sooner.""Just tell me now, Richard."So, he did. He told me everything, starting from the flash drive, Ned in the hospital corridor, the audio file he stood alone and listened to four days before the gala. The motel room number Nora gave, the dosage, the timing and even the name of the girl who was actu

Chapter 28: Elderly Foresight

It was 8:08am now.The call came at eight the next morning.I was at the sink washing my baby's bottle when I heard Richard say, "Repeat that again."I turned around.He was standing at the counter holding a phone to his ears."Harold Jones Senior died eight years ago," he said into the phone with his eyes wide open in shock.I turned the faucet off.He lowered the phone and looked at me across the kitchen. "The clause was struck from the will seven years ago. That was a private amendment signed by Harold Jones Senior."I watched him amazed.“What? A dead man's signature, filed and certified, sitting quietly in the probate records for seven years. Whoever did this was smart indeed.” I said.This happened when Richard was twenty-one, still in law school, and not yet a threat to anyone."Is this Arthur?" I asked."Maybe he is the one." Richard set the phone down. "Every forged document needs a notary. And a notary who certified a dead man's signature is someone who can be flipped.""Can

Chapter 29: The Woman Behind the Curtain

Richard met his mother again on a Tuesday.He didn't tell me until he was already on his way out."I called her this morning," he said. "We will be meeting at a coffee shop in Hillcrest."I was on the sofa with the baby against my chest and a highlighted evidence chapter open in my lap. I looked up at him."Okay," I said."Is that all you've got to say?" He asked, raising his eyebrow."I already said everything I needed to say." I looked back down at my textbook. "Go, Richard."He stood in the doorway for another second. Then he left.He was gone two hours.I fed the baby, put her down for her nap, washed two bottles and reorganized the legal pads on the counter. I poured a cup of coffee I didn't need when I heard his key in the lock.He came in and set a manila envelope on the kitchen table.He didn't say anything right away. He just hung up his jacket, stood at the counter with his back for a moment, then turned around. His face was complicated in a way I hadn't seen before, it loo

Chapter 30: The Name That Shouldn't Exist

First, it started with the documents.This is three days after Richard met with his mother Mrs. Elizabeth. I spread the file across the kitchen table while the baby slept and Richard was in the shower. I wasn't looking for anything specific but I just wanted to read through it myself, with my own eyes, without anyone explaining it to me or summarizing it.I had learned that about legal documents. The thing that matters is almost never in the section everyone points you to. I made a fresh coffee, sat down, and started reading.The correspondence between Arthur and Hayes was something else. Two men who knew exactly what they were doing. I worked through it slowly, highlighting as I went, building a picture in my head of how the illegal structure of the merger had been assembled piece by piece over three years.Then I got to the records on the documents.They were attached to the back of the third document, eight pages of transaction logs.Financial records showing every payment made

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