Married to the Billionaire Who Betrayed Me novel Chapter 174

Chapter 174 They Came For Our Son

I watched his broad back. I traced the faint outline of the thick bandages wrapped around his ribs under his shirt. He took a bullet for my son. He knelt in

the rain to clear my name. He stripped himself of his wealth and his pride to give me room to breathe

The kettle whistled.

Tristan poured the hot water into two mugs. He set one in front of me. Steam curled into the cool air.

He did not sit across from me. He stood on the other side of the marble island. He rested his hands on the counter.

“I spent the last three years living in the past, Tristan said. The quiet hum of the refrigerator filled the silence between his words. “I replayed the day I left you in Port Sterling a thousand times. I tried to calculate a way to fix my arrogance. I thought if I gave you the Johnston Group, it would balance the

scales.

He looked down at his hands. “It was a foolish thought. You cannot buy redemption. You cannot erase the nights you spent freezing in an apartment without

a heater.”

He lifted his head. His gray eyes met mine.

“I do not want to live in the past anymore, Mina,” he said.

The air in the kitchen turned heavy. The raw, unfiltered emotion in his gaze made my chest ache.

‘I do not want to be your savior,” Tristan continued. “I do not want to be your enemy. I do not want to manage your life.

He walked around the island. He stopped a few inches from my stool. He reached out and took my hands in his. His skin felt warm against my cold fingers.

There were no cameras flashing in our faces. There were no board members waiting to judge our every move. There was no extravagant ballroom, no

designer dresses, no public spectacle to force my hand.

It was just the two of us in a quiet kitchen on a rainy morning.

‘I have no ring to offer you today,’ Tristan said. ‘I refuse to buy a diamond to act as an apology weapon. A stone will not prove anything. I want to offer you

the only thing I have left. The truth.”

My breath caught in my throat.

‘I love you,” he told me. “I love the woman who survived the slums. I love the woman who built a company from nothing. I love the mother who fought a

war to protect her son. I even love the rage you carried to survive.”

He squeezed my hands.

“The bloodline does not matter,” Tristan said. “Thomas Whitmore is a footnote in your story. You are the strongest person I have ever known. I want to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve the space beside you.”

He dropped to one knee.

He did not kneel in a crowded plaza to make a point to the media. He knelt on the kitchen tile, hidden from the world, offering his surrender to me alone.

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Chapter 174 They Came For Our Son

Ming he whispered: ‘Can you imagine a future with me? Not to fix the past. Not because of a contract. But in spite of everything we broke?”

A fresh tear slipped down my face. The pain and the exhaustion of the last three years washed away, leaving a clean, bright ache in my heart. He was not asking the girl he abandoned. He was asking the wontan who conquered his empire.

I opened my mouth to give him my answer.

The intercom on the wall buzzed. The/sharp, mechanical sound shattered the quiet moment.

Tristan froze. His jaw tightened.

The intercom buzzed a second time. It was a long, insistent wail.

I pulled my hands from his grip. I walked to the wall and pressed the button. “Yes, Marcus. What is it?”

“Mina, Marcus said. His voice sounded tight. The steady calm he usually carried was missing. “I am sorry to interrupt. You have a visitor in the lobby.”

I am not taking meetings today,” I replied.

*She is not here for a meeting,” Marcus stated. The intercom crackled with static. “It is Harriet Montgomery. She arrived with three federal marshals and a judge from the family court.”

My blood turned to ice.

“What does she want?” I asked.

She filed an emergency petition, Marcus said. I could hear the sound of raised voices in the background of the call. “She submitted a certified DNA test to the court an hour ago. She is challenging your claim to the Serrano Trust based on biological fraud.”

I stared at the speaker box. The nightmare was real.

“That is a civil matter,” I told Marcus. “Why are the marshals with her?”

‘Because the trust is not the only thing she petitioned,” Marcus said. His voice dropped to a grim, terrified whisper. ‘She claims you are an unfit mother and a flight risk. She holds a court order, Mina. She is here to take custody of Elias.

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Married to the Billionaire Who Betrayed Me