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All Chapters of My Brother's Best Friend's Secret Baby: Chapter 341 - Chapter 350

350 Chapters

Chapter 341

In the car, I put Mila in her car seat, climbed in, and Aiden started the car. We stayed in the parking lot for a second before he pulled out. "She's okay," I said. "She's okay," he said. He drove. We were two blocks from the apartment when I said, "You've been on the floor every morning and every night for four months." "Yes." "Without anyone asking you to." "There was nothing to ask," he said. "You showed me the folder. The exercises were clear. That was the work." I looked at his profile. The same profile I'd been studying for years, the one I'd tensed against for weeks before learning how to read it properly. "I knew you'd make sure she was okay," I said. He didn't answer immediately. He drove through the next block in that silence that wasn't uncomfortable. "I didn't fix it," he said. "I know." "Dr. Kimani fixed it. Mila fixed it. The exercises were what was available, and I did them, but I didn't fix the underlying issue." "I know," I said. "That's not

Chapter 342

Rosalie's POV It was a Wednesday morning in October when I realized it was full. Not full in the sense of running out of space, though that was true too, that particular organized density of a working studio where every surface had a purpose and the floor had established paths through it. It was practical fullness, the fullness of a space being completely used. What I realized that Wednesday morning was the other kind. The three children were elsewhere. Alessandro was at school, where he'd been for two months and had informed his teacher on the first day that he needed a moment to think before speaking, and remarkably, she'd given him one. Mila was with Mrs. Willow. Lucy was in her first class, probably winning an argument before the bell rang. Aiden was at the firm. The apartment had that particular quality of a life paused between its own moments, a full quiet rather than an empty one. I went to the studio. I stood in the doorway first. I'd been doing it for years wit

Chapter 343

I went inside. I crossed the studio slowly. I stopped in front of the early works. The compressed, dense work of a twenty-one-year-old woman who was also a mother and a hotel housekeeper and a woman who hadn't yet decided she was worth fighting for. Those pieces were better than I'd thought they were at the time. I'd been so afraid while making them that they wouldn't be enough, that they would be the inadequate work of someone without proper training, without the resources, without the time. I made them anyway. In the spaces I had. With the tools I had. They were true. That was what they were. Imprecise at times, technically rough in places, but true. You could see what they were reaching toward, and the tension was real. I crossed the room. I stood in front of The Return for a while. Then I went to the blank canvas that had been leaning against the back wall for three weeks. I'd been waiting for the beginning. I'd learned years ago that forcing a beginning produced

Chapter 344

Aiden's POV I found out on a Monday. Marcus brought it to my attention, the way Marcus brought me things he thought I needed to know but hadn't yet decided how to handle. He came into my office and closed the door, the signal for things that weren't routine. He sat across from me. "We have an accreditation issue with Ortega," he said. He told me what he knew. Daniel Ortega had been with the firm for fourteen months. Former Navy, a transition specialist, good with clients, good with veterans going through the program. The accreditation in question was a professional certification, not military, one the firm required for a specific category of client consultation. It had expired eight months earlier. Ortega had listed it as current on his profile. Marcus laid it out without comment. I listened. When he finished, I said, "How did you find it?" "Routine compliance review. The system flagged the expiration date against the certification documentation." He paused. "He did

Chapter 345

He watched me. "And you come to me before something composes itself again," I said. "Not after it's become a structure. When it's still a small thing that can be handled like a small thing." He stared at me. "That's it?" "That's it." He was silent for a moment. He looked at the desk, then at me. "I expected something much worse." "I know," I said. "That's what happens when you stay alone with something. It becomes bigger than what it is." He looked at me with that particular expression of someone who had just heard something connect to something deep inside himself. I didn't explain any further. That was his to sit with. I left his office. I called Dr. Garrett from the car at six. He answered, and I told him about Ortega, what had happened, and how I'd handled it. I told him everything, including the hour I'd spent thinking through the firm's options and procedures before Rosie's question redirected me. Dr. Garrett listened. When I finished, he said, "You handle

Chapter 346

Rosalie's POV Lucy came home from debate practice on a Thursday afternoon in October and set her bag down by the door in that particular way she had when she had something to say before doing anything else. I was at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and Mila was on the floor at my feet with the stacking rings she'd been studying with great seriousness for twenty minutes. Alessandro was in his room. Aiden wasn't home from the firm yet. Lucy stopped in the hallway for a moment. Just a moment. I noticed because Lucy didn't usually stop in hallways. She moved through the apartment with the purposeful efficiency of someone who knew where she was going and what she was going to do once she got there. That pause was information. She came to the kitchen table and sat across from me. "I need to tell you something," she said. I set down my tea. "Tell me." "There's a new girl in debate," she said. "She transferred last week. She's very good. Better than most of the people in th

Chapter 347

She seemed satisfied. She reached into her bag, pulled out her homework, set it on the table, and opened it. I picked up my tea again. Mila knocked over the stacking rings and made a surprised sound at this development, then began examining the toppled arrangement with the same seriousness she'd given the upright one. I stayed at the kitchen table and breathed. The breathing was deliberate. Not from panic. From the particular effort of receiving something unexpected in a context where my face was being read by someone very good at reading it, then watching that same person resolve it into something simple. It's just a girl from my school. I thought about what it had cost me to hear that name for the first time. The cold thing. That particular quality of a word with a history attached to it. I'd spent years learning the difference between the cold thing as information and the cold thing as residue, and I was better at telling them apart now, but the cold thing still came,

Chapter 348

Aiden's POV I called Jeffery on a Sunday night in January. Rosie was at the studio. The kids were in bed. I had the apartment to myself, in that particular way of having it to yourself when the people who made it what it was were all there but not in the room. Jeffery answered on the second ring. "I need operational support," I said. A pause. "For what?" "Our tenth anniversary is in April. I want to renew our vows in the garden. The same garden. The same string lights, if we can find them. I need someone who can plan things without Rosie noticing." Silence. Then, "You called the right person." He said it with that particular quality he had when he was waiting for someone to ask him for something. As if the request was overdue and he had been patient about it. "How much time do we have?" he asked. "Three months." "Three months is enough if we start now." "I know," I said. "That's why I'm calling now." We talked for forty minutes. He had opinions about the l

Chapter 349

"A vow renewal. In the garden behind the building. The same garden as the wedding. I want it to feel like the same thing and also like ten years later." She stared at me. "Who knows?" "Jeffery. You. Your grandfather will know when we ask him about the flowers." She nodded. "I won't tell Alessandro. He'll tell Mom within forty-eight hours." "I know. That's why I'm not telling him." "Mila can know," she said. "She won't tell anyone. She doesn't have the language for that yet." "I was planning to include Mila." "Good. She likes being included." She looked at the table, already thinking. "What exactly do you need from me?" "What the moment should feel like," I said. "You've watched your mother for ten years. You know what she values. What should it make her feel?" She was silent for a moment. A real silence, not the pause before a prepared answer. The silence of someone actually thinking. "Not big," she finally said. "Mom doesn't like big. She likes real. She'll be mo

Chapter 350

Rosalie's POV I had been working on the large canvas since November. Five months of circling around something I couldn't find. I knew what the painting looked like. I had the composition, the silhouette, the light source, the color choices. I could describe it if someone asked me. What I couldn't find was what it meant. It happened sometimes. Not often. Usually, I knew what a painting was doing before I knew what it looked like. This one had come in the opposite order, and since November, I'd been waiting for the meaning to catch up with the image. It was a Tuesday morning in late March. Three weeks before the anniversary. Aiden had taken the children to school, and the apartment was quiet in the way it was when it wasn't empty but paused, all the full noise of life temporarily suspended. I'd been at the studio since six-thirty. I was doing the work that was available, the small things, following up on the commission, corresponding with the curator's office about the retros

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