Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 290

Chapter 277: The Fult Ruling

SEDONA

Adaeze called on a Tuesday morning, and I knew before she said a word that this was the call, the call that changed everything.

“The ruling came through,” she said. “It’s done, Sedona.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Primary custody, granted to you, full and unrestricted,” Adaeze said. “Given everything, the documented pattern, the picnic incident, the criminal charges now formally filed, the judge didn’t find this a close call. I want you to understand that clearly. This wasn’t decided by a narrow margin. It wasn’t a careful weighing of competing arguments that happened to land in your favour. The evidence simply made any other outcome impossible to justify.”

I closed my eyes.

“Logan’s visitation rights are suspended pending the criminal proceedings,” she continued. “Given his current custody status and the charges he’s facing, that’s likely to remain the case for a very long time, possibly permanently, depending on how the criminal trial resolves. He didn’t contest the custody ruling, by the way – his attorney filed no opposition.”

“He didn’t fight it,” I said. Not quite a question.

“There was nothing left for him to fight with,” Adaeze said.

“He’s sitting in a cell facing decades on the criminal charges. A custody dispute over supervised visitation rights probably doesn’t register as a battle worth spending resources on anymore, not against that backdrop.” A pause, softer now. “It’s over, Sedona. Not the criminal case, that still has a long road ahead of it. But this part, the part that’s been governing your life and Nick’s for over a year now, it’s finished. You won. Completely.”

I didn’t say anything for a long moment.

す

I had imagined this call so many times over the past seven months. I’d built a whole picture around what I expected to feel when it finally arrived. The explosive relief. The kind of victory that demanded celebration.

“Thank you,” I said. “For all of it. Every single piece of this, from the very beginning.”

“You did the actual work,” Adaeze said. “I …just built the case around what was already true.”

I sat at the table after we hung up. The phone is still in my hand. I let myself simply feel it without performing anything for anyone.

This was the thing I hadn’t expected. After seven months of fighting,careful filings, supervised visits, and a public park where everything had nearly fallen apart completely, the moment it finally landed didn’t feel like a finish line crossed in triumph.

1.3

The Full Ruling

Lexhaled.

t had been braced, in some small permanent way, for over a year. Braced for the next motion, the next escalation, the next phone call that might bring devastating news instead of good.

Clam

I had built an entire internal architecture around vigilance, the same way Drew had built his around watching for the bad parts at Dante’s matches, and now, sitting in this quiet kitchen with the ruling finally settled, I understood that the architecture could finally, slowly, start coming down.

I didn’t need to brace anymore.

I went to find Nick.

He was in the back garden with Lake and Drew, the three of them deep in some elaborate game involving the hydrangea and a system of rules I didn’t fully understand and didn’t need to.

K

I watched him for a moment before calling his name. His easy laugh. I keenly watched the way he moved now. It is very different from the usual cautious child I’d held in a family services office all those months

ago.

“Nick, can you come here for a moment?”

He came. He was slightly out of breath. His face was open and curious.

“What’s up?”

I knelt down to his level. The way I’d learned to do for the conversations that mattered most.

“The judge made a decision today,” I said.

“About where you’re going to live. Officially. Permanently.”

His face went very still.

“You live with me now,” I said. “All the time. Not visits, not a schedule that might change. This is just where you live. This is home.”

I watched it land on him slowly, the way the biggest things always landed on Nick – not all at once, but in careful stages, his mind working through each piece before he let himself fully believe the whole of it.

“Forever?” he said.

“Forever,” I confirmed. “Nobody can take this away. Not a hearing, not a phone call, not anything. This is settled.

“You’re home. And you’re staying home.”

He didn’t talk for about one minute. He walked close to me and put his arms around my waist. The same way he had in the family services office all those months ago. The first time he’d seen me in person after months of only a voice.

I held him.

“Okay,” he said, finally, into my shoulder. The same word he’d used after our hardest conversation about his father, small, complete, the particular weight he gave to that one word when something enormous had

213

The Full Rule

finally settled into something he could actually hold.

“Okay,” I said back.

Behind us, Lake had abandoned the hydrangea entirely and was watching with undisguised interest.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“Nick lives here now,” I said. “Officially. Forever.”

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