Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 255

Chapter 246: Adaeze, Unbothered

SEDONA

I had never seen Adaeze raise her voice I understood, sitting at the table while Logan’s lawyers’ argument was going on in the courtroom.

She is not known for raising her voice. She stood. She gathered her book and sheets of notes. She adjusted her gown and turned and faced the bench. The unhurried calm she carried herself was visible.

“Your Honour, before we move further, counsel to identify the specific harm alleged.” She turned, just slightly, toward Logan’s lawyer. Not aggressive. Just precise. Like a closed door with one very narrow gap left open.

“What, exactly, has this relationship done to Nick Hayes? Has the minor child displayed distress, confusion, regression, or any documented behavioural concern arising from his time with his uncle and his uncle’s partner?”

“I’ll answer for the record, since opposing counsel appears not to have prepared an answer,” Adaeze continued. “Nick has met Cameron Preston and Lucian Adeyemi in exactly one context: family gatherings, during supervised and unsupervised visitation periods that this court itself has already reviewed and found appropriate. By every account on record, including statements from Sherry Hayes herself, in affidavits submitted in this very proceeding describing prior family events, Nick was, in her words, ‘happy and well cared for’ during those gatherings.”

She let that sit for a moment. “I’d also like to enter additional character evidence,” Adaeze said, “already partially on record from this morning’s proceedings, but worth restating in this specific context. Cameron Preston’s role in his sister’s recovery, medical, financial, and personal, is documented extensively in Dr. Mitchell’s records and in the petitioner’s own testimony. Lucian Adeyemi is a senior executive at Preston Investments Pacific, a father raising his own child with what every witness who has observed him, including this court’s own appointed social worker, has described as exceptional care and stability.” She paused, letting the next part land with deliberate weight. “The household opposing counsel is characterizing as a ‘developmental environment’ of concern includes Nick’s maternal grandparents, two people this court heard testimony from in December, both of whom this court found credible and stable. It includes a coach who survived a violent attack three weeks ago and continues, despite his injuries, to show up for this family. What it does not include, Your Honour, is anyone who has been the subject of a stalking complaint. That distinction belongs entirely to the petitioner’s husband.”

I kept my hands flat on the table. I did not look at Logan. I had learned, finally and completely, how not to give him that.

The judge looked up from her notes. She had been quiet through most of the exchange, the specific quiet of someone listening fully rather than performing patience, and when she spoke, her tone had shifted, not dramatically, but unmistakably, the tone of someone whose patience for a particular line of argument had reached its natural end.

“Counsel,” she said, addressing Logan’s lawyer directly. “Do you have any evidence, any at all, of harm to this child beyond the simple existence of this relationship?”

A pause. The kind of pause that, in a courtroom, told everyone present exactly what the answer was going

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Unbothered-

to be before it was said.

“Your Honour, you know that…”

Clam

The Judge looked up.” That’s not what I asked.” Her voice was flat. She didn’t need to raise it for it to land.

“I asked for evidence of harm. Do you have any?”

Another pause, shorter this time, and worse for its brevity.

“No, Your Honour.”

The judge made a note. Then she looked up and addressed the room generally, the way I understood judges sometimes did when they wanted something specifically preserved in the transcript.

“For the record,” she said, “the sexual orientation of a household member is not, absent demonstrated harm to the child, a relevant factor in a custody determination under Illinois law.

“Counsel has presented no evidence of harm. This argument is, frankly, irrelevant to the matter before this court. I’ll also note that raising it without evidence reflects poorly on how seriously this motion was prepared.”

She set down her pen. A small, precise click. “The motion is denied. In its entirety.”

She said, irrelevantly, the way you’d say a word you found mildly offensive to have had to use at all, not raised, not theatrical, just laced with something close to genuine irritation that the court’s time had been spent this way.

Logan’s lawyer sat back down without a word. He still didn’t look at Logan. I noticed that again, the same careful distancing from before, the specific posture of an attorney protecting his own professional standing from a client’s bad decisions.

I felt the air in the room change. It wasn’t dramatic, no gasps, no visible reaction from the gallery beyond what courtroom decorum allowed. But I felt it anyway, the specific shift of a room that had just watched something fail completely and comprehensively, the way the whole morning’s worth of accumulated tension found somewhere to go.

I turned, slightly, in my seat. Cameron was in the gallery. He hadn’t moved through any of it, the same stillness he’d carried since the argument began, the posture I recognized from our father, the one that meant he was holding something completely still inside himself until it was safe to let it move.

He breathed. I watched him do it. A long, visible exhale. His shoulders dropped, just slightly, the first full breath I’d seen him take in what must have been twenty minutes. Something crossed his face. Not quite relief. Not quite anger. Something true, somewhere between both.

We were in the hallway within minutes, the recess called, the morning’s proceedings adjourning for a short break before the final summary.

Cameron had his phone out before we’d fully cleared the courtroom doors. I watched him dial. I knew who it was before he said the name.

“Lucian,” Cameron said. Not the legal summary first. Not the explanation of what had happened, or what had been argued, or how close it had gotten before the judge shut it down. He led with this:

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