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Chapter 87: Julian’s Romantic Subplot
publish date:
2026-05-21 15:27:18
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One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: THE TRUTH ABOUT MICHAEL HART
Sophia has the full picture by two in the afternoon.She sends it in a document rather than calling, which is how I know it is the kind of information that needs to be read rather than heard, the kind that requires the particular steadiness of a person sitting with words on a screen rather than a voice in their ear that carries its own momentum.I read it at the kitchen island with Lucian beside me.Michael Hart. Forty-one. An architect based in Westport, Connecticut, which explains Emma’s interest in structures, in how things hold together, in the math of bridges, the thing she carries without knowing where it came from or who it came from. He and Isabella were engaged for fourteen months. The engagement ended when Isabella told him she was pregnant and the timing made him uncertain about the paternity. He accepted her word that the child was his. He helped her through the pregnancy. He was present at Emma’s birth.He raised Emma as his daughter for the first two years of her life.I
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE MAN ISABELLA WAS SUPPOSED TO MARRY
The tabloid piece runs on a Friday.I see it at seven in the morning, the same way I see everything that matters now, at the kitchen island before Lucian is awake, in the particular quiet of an hour that belongs to me before the day takes it. The headline is different from the others we have been managing. The others were about Lucian, about the company, about me. This one is about Emma.Billionaire Love Child Bombshell: New Witness Says Lucian Blackwood Is Not The Father.I read it twice. Then I call Sophia.She answers before the second ring. “I’m already reading it.”“Michael Hart,” I say. The byline credits a man named Michael Hart as the primary source. “Who is Michael Hart.”“Pulling it now,” she says. I hear her keyboard. “Michael Hart. Forty-one. Based in Connecticut. He was engaged to Isabella approximately eleven years ago. The engagement ended before Emma was born.” A pause. “He’s claiming he and Isabella were together when Emma was conceived. He’s saying Lucian is not the
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: WHAT EMMA TOLD THE JUDGE
I bring Emma to the courthouse on a Thursday morning.Not in a Blackwood Holdings car with a security detail. In a cab, which was Emma’s preference when I asked her the night before how she wanted to get there. She said cars with drivers make her feel like she is being transported somewhere rather than going somewhere herself, and there is a difference, and I did not argue with that because she is completely right.She sits beside me in the back of the cab with her school bag on her lap and her astronomy book inside it and the particular composed expression she brings to things she has decided to take seriously. She is wearing the navy jacket. She is always wearing the navy jacket.“You don’t have to tell me what you’re going to say,” I say.She looks out the window. “I know.”“And you don’t have to tell me afterward what you said,” I say.She looks at me. “Don’t you want to know?”“Yes,” I say. “But what you say to Judge Grant is yours. I am just the person who gets you there.”She i
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE CUSTODY QUESTION NO ONE WANTED TO ASK
Judge Eleanor Grant’s courtroom is smaller than I expected.I have built courtrooms large in my imagination, the way you build things you have never seen but have heard about in serious tones, high ceilings and dark wood and the particular gravity of a space designed to remind everyone in it that the stakes are real. This room has those things but in a compressed, functional way. Nothing ornamental. Nothing designed to impress. Just a room built for the specific purpose of deciding things that matter, stripped of everything that does not serve that purpose.Judge Grant herself is sixty, maybe, with the kind of face that has never bothered performing warmth and does not perform severity either. She simply is. She reads the documents in front of her with the complete attention of someone who believes that reading documents carefully is the foundation of every correct decision and has never seen evidence to the contrary.We sit on one side of the room. Ethan beside Lucian, me beside Etha
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER THIRTY: EVELYN BLACKWOOD’S PRIVATE BATTLE
I read the headline three times in Ethan’s office and then I put my phone face-down on the table and I do not pick it up again for eleven minutes.Not because I am not thinking about it. Because I am thinking about it so completely that picking up the phone would be redundant. My name in three headlines simultaneously. My pregnancy. My diagnosis. High-risk, sources fear for baby, the particular cruelty of medical information weaponized into a narrative designed to make me look fragile and Lucian look distracted and the company look unstable all in a single coordinated placement.Gabriel Kane is not escalating anymore.He is executing.Lucian is on the phone with Marcus before we leave Ethan’s building. I can hear Marcus’s voice from where I am standing, not the words, the tone, the flat controlled energy of a man who has been managing crises for twenty years and has just encountered one that requires more than management.In the car Lucian sits beside me with his phone in his hand and
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: GABRIEL’S LEAK TO THE PRESS
I listen to the voicemail three times before I wake Lucian.Not because I need to hear it three times to understand it. Because I need those three listenings to decide what order to do things in, which is a habit I have developed over the past month, the instinct to sequence before I act, to know what I am going to do before I start doing it so that nothing I do becomes something someone else can use before I am ready.Nathan’s voice on the recording is different from the Nathan Sterling who sat across from me in the conference room with his hands flat and still on the file. That Nathan was performing. This Nathan sounds like a man who has been awake all night and has decided that whatever he left out of his statement is more dangerous to hold than to release.Mrs. Blackwood, the voicemail says. I left something out. There is a third payment. Not through the Meridian account. Through a different channel entirely. I don’t have the destination. I only know it existed because I saw the i
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend BOOK 2-THE PRICE OF FOREVER
PROLOGUEI used to think peace was something you earned once and kept.Like a trophy you put on a shelf, and it stayed there, collecting dust in the best possible way, untouched and permanent. I thought that after everything Lucian and I survived, after the gala and the scandal and Ethan’s public b
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 115: The Wedding Day
June fifteenth. The day. Finally.I wake up in Evelyn’s penthouse. Tradition. Bride and groom spending night before apart.Emma’s with Lucian. Last night together as just the two of them before I officially join the family.Sophia’s already awake. Coffee made. Breakfast ordered. Organized chaos.“B
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 113: The Morning After
The morning after Lucian proposes the wedding date, I wake early.Emma’s still sleeping. Lucian’s beside me. Peaceful. Safe. Normal.I slip out of bed. Kitchen. Coffee. Quiet.My phone has messages. Dozens. From last night’s announcement.Sophia: **OMG FINALLY! JUNE 15TH! I’M CLEARING MY CALENDAR!
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 112: The Proposal
Three months into therapy. Three months of healing. Three months of peace.Emma’s six months old now. Sitting up. Laughing. Perfect.The company’s thriving. Twelve clients. Revenue hitting fifteen million first year. Success beyond projections.Therapy’s working. I sleep. Lucian relaxes. We laugh.
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