Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 163

Brainstorming with Lucian-1

Chapter 153: Brainstorming with Lucian

Sedona’s POV

There was only one person that came to mind about this sort of thing and I knew he would give me great advice as well.

Lucian was at a coffee shop three blocks from the Preston house when I texted him.

He texted back in forty seconds: I can be there in ten minutes.

He arrived in eight.

He came into the kitchen where I was sitting at the table with my laptop still open and my phone beside it and the notes I’d made during the call to Janet, which contained only a minimum things but also the actual key points of what was being said during the call, the framework of what was and wasn’t possible.

He sat down across from me.

Didn’t ask what was wrong. Didn’t perform concern or anything that would show he pitied me. He just sat down and looked at me with the attentiveness that was his default setting and waited to see what I’d called him here for.

This was the thing about Lucian that I’d been understanding more clearly across the weeks since the party -the quality he had that Cameron also had, but differently, not that Cameron was bad, no there were both good and helpful towards me in different ways.

Cameron’s attentiveness was warm and it was there, but it was also protective, like someone doing the brunt work so the weaker one wouldn’t get crushed, always running the protective calculation alongside the listening.

What could this harm, what does she need, how do I help. That was all Cameron and I wasn’t complaining

one bit.

But Lucian listened without the protective calculation because I wasn’t his to protect. I was someone he’d decided to include in his circle of people he paid attention to, which was a different and in some ways more useful position.

He didn’t need me to be all right. He could receive whatever was actually happening and help me from a blunt perspective which was what I wanted at this point.

I told him what I’d found out.

The internet research first. Then the call to Janet, the things she’d said, the not impossible and the complications, the multi-jurisdictional layer, the documentation she’d said to gather.

He listened through all of it without interrupting, which was what he did. He let the full thing exist before he started engaging with it.

When I finished, he was quiet for a moment

12

Brainstore with Lucian 1

Claon

The jurisdictional question,” he said. Whether it’s Illinois or Washington-have you thought about which would be more favorable?”

I looked at him. “That’s an interesting first question.”

“It’s a practical question,” he said. “The changed circumstances argument is stronger in a jurisdiction that hasn’t been running this case and doesn’t have prior conclusions to protect.” He paused. “But it depends on whether you can establish Washington jurisdiction, which probably requires Nick to have some connection to Washington, which currently he doesn’t.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I said.

“It’s the kind of thing an attorney would think about,” he said. “Which is why you need one.”

“I know I need one,” I said. “I’m not ready to retain one yet. I’m gathering information first.”

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