Lahat ng Kabanata ng Terms & Conditions : Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

# Chapter Twenty-One: Six MonthsJulian's information on Marion Halloway turned out to be exactly as useful, and exactly as unwelcome, as his text had promised."She's a shell," he said, spreading a handful of printouts across the kitchen island while Ivy ate the dinner he'd saved for her, still in her chef's whites, too tired to fully absorb what she was looking at. "Halloway Property Group has exactly one deal on record before yours — a warehouse acquisition in the Bronx, financed entirely through a holding company that traces back, through two more shell layers, to a trust account Weston controls."Ivy set down her fork. "He bought my restaurant space to spite me?""I don't think it's about spite, specifically," Julian said, careful. "I think it's leverage. He can't attack the marriage directly yet — not without evidence, and we haven't given him any, not since the dinner. But he can make your life harder around the edges. Prove to himself, and eventually to the board, that there's

# Chapter Twenty-Three: The GalaThe Cade Capital Foundation gala took over the entire ballroom of a hotel on Park Avenue, four hundred guests in black tie beneath chandeliers the size of small cars, and Ivy spent the first twenty minutes gripping her champagne glass slightly too tightly, aware of the weight of every glance that slid her way — assessing, curious, some openly skeptical, all of them looking for cracks in a marriage the whole room had clearly been talking about for months."You look like you're facing a firing squad," Julian murmured, close to her ear, his hand steady at the small of her back as they moved through the crowd. "Relax. You've handled Weston at his own dinner table. This is easier.""This is four hundred Westons.""Most of them care considerably less than Weston does," Julian said, dry, and Ivy managed a genuine laugh despite her nerves, which seemed to be exactly the effect he'd been going for, because something in his shoulders eased once she did.The even

# Chapter Twenty-Five: Bea Wants the TruthBea picked up on the first ring, her voice smaller than Ivy had heard it in weeks, thin in a way that made Ivy's chest tighten with old, familiar fear."Hey," Ivy said, sitting down hard on the edge of her bed, Julian hovering in the doorway, careful to give her privacy while staying close enough to help if she needed it. "I'm here. What's wrong? Are you okay, is it your heart—""I'm fine. Physically, I mean." Bea's voice wavered. "It's not that kind of scared. I just — I couldn't sleep, and I started thinking about everything, and I need to ask you something, and I need you to actually tell me the truth this time, Ivy. No more soft version. The real one."Ivy's stomach dropped. "Okay.""Are you and Julian actually together? Like — real together? Or is this some kind of arrangement?" Bea's voice cracked slightly on the last word. "I've been doing the math for weeks, Ivy. The timing. The money. The way you never talk about how you actually met

# Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Weekend Like a FamilySunday morning unfolded slow and unhurried, the kind of domestic quiet that had become, over the past two days, disarmingly comfortable — Sadie sprawled on the living room floor with a coloring book, Julian working through the Sunday paper with an actual cup of coffee instead of whatever the dying-bird machine produced, Ivy moving between them with a second batch of pancakes that had, this time, earned Sadie's grudging admission that they were "basically as good as the first batch, which is really saying something.""Can we watch a movie?" Sadie asked, around noon, already digging through the shelf of the apartment's rarely used media console. "A good one. Not a boring adult one.""I don't watch boring adult movies," Julian said, mock-offended."You watch documentaries about shipping logistics for fun, Uncle Julian. That's the most boring adult thing I've ever heard of.""It's fascinating, actually.""It's not," Sadie said, with total co

# Chapter Twenty-Nine: 2 A.M.The formal notice from the estate trustees arrived on a Friday afternoon, dense with legal language that took Ivy three reads to fully parse: a hearing scheduled in three weeks, both of them required to appear, prepared to demonstrate — in terms the letter left frustratingly vague — that their marriage met the "good faith" standard the will required."What does that even mean," Ivy asked, spreading the pages across the kitchen island that evening, Julian beside her, sleeves already rolled up in the particular way that meant he'd settled in for a long night of work. "Good faith. How do you prove that to a room full of trustees?""You don't, exactly," Julian said, grim, scanning the document with the same focused intensity he brought to everything. "Not with a single piece of evidence. It's cumulative — patterns of behavior, corroborating testimony, financial entanglement that goes beyond what a purely transactional arrangement would typically involve. West