All Chapters of Terms & Conditions : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

# Chapter Sixty-One: Under SiegeBy the time Julian and Ivy reached Harriet's office the next morning, the story had already broken — not through any official channel, but through a business-press blog that ran with the headline CADE CAPITAL FOUNDER'S FATHER APPARENTLY NOT DEAD, LEGAL CHAOS EXPECTED, sourced, vaguely, to "a person familiar with the estate.""I don't yet know who leaked it," Harriet said, grim, gesturing at the article already pulled up on her monitor. "It could have been anyone with access to the board's private channels — a trustee, a staffer, even someone connected to Weston, though I want to stress I have no direct evidence of that yet. What matters more, right now, is managing the fallout.""What does the fallout actually look like," Julian asked, jaw tight."Legally, complicated," Harriet said. "The will's entire structure — the marriage clause, the transfer of control, all of it — was predicated on your father's death. If he's alive, the will's provisions may ne

# Chapter Sixty-Three: The Emergency SessionJulian didn't step down.He arrived at the emergency session the next morning having decided, sometime in the small, sleepless hours of the night, that Weston's offer — however clean, however tempting in its simplicity — was ultimately just another version of the same instinct he'd spent the past year trying to unlearn: handling things alone, quietly, without consulting the people the decision actually affected.He hadn't told Ivy that decision either, not fully, not yet. He told himself there would be time after the session.The trustees' room felt different this time — colder, more formal, five faces regarding him with none of the cautious warmth that had accompanied their earlier ruling. Weston sat near the back again, his expression unreadable, and Julian understood, glancing at him, that his cousin was waiting to see which way he'd jump."Mr. Cade," the lead trustee began, her tone clipped and businesslike. "I trust you understand the

# Chapter Sixty-Five: The Same ThingCorazon didn't ask many questions when Ivy showed up at the apartment with a small overnight bag, just pulled her daughter into a hug and set about making tea, the particular, wordless comfort of a mother who understood that some hurts needed space before they needed conversation.Bea, home from her own place for the weekend, curled up beside Ivy on the couch once the tea was made, quiet and present in a way that felt like its own kind of support."You don't have to talk about it," Bea said, after a while. "But I'm here if you want to."Ivy sat with the offer for a long moment, turning the day's events over in her mind — Julian's silence, Weston's offer, the particular ache of learning something so significant secondhand, from a rumor, instead of from the person who was supposed to be her partner in exactly this kind of decision."He hid something from me again," she said, finally, quiet. "Something big. Not maliciously — I believe that, actually.

# Chapter Sixty-Seven: Alone By ChoiceIvy threw herself into Liwanag over the following days, grateful for the restaurant's demanding, unglamorous rhythm as a place to pour the restless, unresolved ache she was carrying — inventory to manage, a new hire to train, a health inspector's routine visit scheduled for later that week that she'd been meaning to prepare for and kept, somehow, not quite getting around to.The inspection, when it finally came, did not go well."Your walk-in's temperature log has three gaps in the past two weeks," the inspector said, unimpressed, marking something on his clipboard. "And I'm seeing some pest evidence near the dry storage that needs immediate remediation. I'm not going to shut you down today, but I'm scheduling a follow-up in five days, and if these issues aren't fully resolved, we will be discussing a suspension."Ivy stood in the middle of her own restaurant, exhaustion and stress crashing over her all at once, the temperature log gaps a direct,

# Chapter Sixty-Nine: Personal NowThe weekend conversation Ivy and Julian had planned got delayed by a single day — not by either of them, but by a call from Harriet on Friday afternoon that arrived with the particular tight urgency Ivy had learned, over the past year, always meant trouble."Weston's made another move," Harriet said, once Julian had put her on speaker, Ivy close beside him in the quiet penthouse. "Having lost ground with the board on the leadership question, and clearly aware his earlier offer didn't land the way he hoped, he's shifted tactics. My sources indicate he's preparing to leak a different story to the press — not about Desmond's survival this time, but about the genuine romantic relationship between the two of you, framed specifically to embarrass Ivy publicly. Timed, I believe, to coincide with Liwanag's official grand opening next week."Ivy felt her stomach drop. "Embarrass me how?""The angle, as I understand it, is designed to paint you as a calculatin