Lahat ng Kabanata ng Nanny To The Billionaire's Secret Heir : Kabanata 131 - Kabanata 140

The final custody hearing began at nine on Monday morning, and Theo was at school arguing with his teacher about whether the cardboard volcano deserved one final eruption. Grayson had insisted on keeping him away from the courthouse unless the judge specifically required otherwise. Theo had already spent too much of his childhood learning words like placement, assessment and hearing. Whatever happened in that room, Grayson wanted his son’s morning to involve spelling tests, and the lunch Marielle had packed badly enough that Theo complained the crackers would become soft beside the fruit.Marielle sat beside Grayson at the counsel table, close enough that their knees touched whenever either shifted. The arrangement was different from the emergency hearing that had sent Theo to the Whitfields. Back then, she had entered the courtroom terrified that every problem surrounding Cole Maritime would be treated as proof that Grayson could not provide a stable home. Today, the c

Julian gave his formal statement two days later in a conference room that belonged to neither Cole Maritime nor any member of the Cole family. His lawyer had arranged for investigators, regulatory counsel and the attorneys handling the historical records to attend. Grayson was not required to be there, but Julian had agreed that his statement could be observed by representatives of the company because several admissions concerned records removed from Cole Maritime systems. Grayson attended as a director, although nobody in the room believed that was the only reason.Marielle came with him.Julian was already seated when they entered. He wore a dark suit without a tie, and there were no folders arranged in front of him this time. No private records to produce at the right moment. No carefully selected evidence. His lawyer had a stack of documents beside him, but Julian himself had only a glass of water and the written statement investigators had prepared from his pr

Theo remembered the conversation about making Marielle his “paper mommy” before either adult had finished breakfast the next morning. Grayson should have expected it. His son could forget where he left both shoes within ten minutes, but apparently anything involving lawyers, sharks or the possibility of changing family arrangements remained permanently available in his memory.“Did you ask them?”Grayson lowered his coffee. “Ask who?”“Your lawyers.”Marielle looked across the table at him with open amusement.“You told him you have many.”“I do have many.”“Then this should be efficient.”Theo pushed his cereal bowl aside. “So did you?”“It was ten o'clock at night when you asked.”“They have phones.”Marielle covered her mouth with her cup.Grayson pointed at her. “You are contributing nothing useful.”“I disagree. I am enjoying this enormously.”Theo looked between them. “Can she be my real mommy or not?”The question removed most of the humour from the room.Grayson had spoken bri

For the next four days, neither Grayson nor Marielle mentioned the contract again, although its approaching termination date seemed to follow them through every ordinary part of their lives. The document remained inside Grayson’s locked desk rather than on the bedside table, yet Marielle thought about it while packing Theo’s lunch, while answering messages about her father’s restitution process, and even while listening to Grayson complain that somebody had moved the charger he had left in the living room. Nothing about their routine suggested a marriage preparing to end, which somehow made the unanswered question more difficult rather than less.Grayson behaved normally too, although Marielle had learned enough about him to recognize when normal behavior required effort. He attended governance meetings, reviewed the final terms surrounding his possible return to Cole Maritime and came home early enough to supervise Theo’s homework, but every so often she caught him watching her with

The lawyer looked from Grayson to Marielle and then down at the contract between them with the careful expression of a man who had learned never to assume that married couples understood the legal consequences of decisions they had already made emotionally. They were sitting in the smaller conference room at Grayson’s attorney’s office, where Marielle had expected a ten-minute appointment and discovered instead that ending a private marriage agreement required considerably more paperwork than beginning one had seemed to require.Grayson had brought the original contract exactly as promised, along with the signed copies his lawyer requested and enough identification to satisfy a process Marielle considered unnecessarily suspicious for two people who were voluntarily terminating an agreement they had voluntarily signed. She had spent most of the first fifteen minutes listening while the lawyer explained that terminating the private agreement would not dissolve their marriage, affect the