Chapter 9
The next two weeks were a war.
Madison was true to her word.
She resigned from Foster Meridian in the most public way possible— a scathing press conference where she accused Julian of fraud, embezzlement, and emotional abuse.
She sold her shares of the company to a hostile competitor, tanking the stock by thirty percent in a single day.
She leaked every embarrassing, private detail of Julian's life to the tabloids— his drinking, his breakdowns, his obsessive search for me.
And then she went for the jugular.
She called The New York Post.
**BILLIONAIRE JULIAN FOSTER FATHERED SECRET TWINS WITH RUNAWAY WIFE— HID BOYS FOR FOUR YEARS TO CASH IN.**
The story broke on a Tuesday morning.
By noon, my quiet little town was swarming with paparazzi.
Cameras were pressed against the windows of my bookstore.
Reporters shouted questions as I walked the boys to the car.
**"Audrey, is it true you kept the boys from Julian for money?"**
**"Did you blackmail him? How much did he pay you to stay quiet?"**
**"Are the boys really his? Or is this a custody scam?"**
I pulled the boys close, covering their ears, running the gauntlet of flashing lights and screaming voices.
Leo, confused and scared, started crying.
Ethan went completely silent, his face white, his eyes squeezed shut.
Julian was at the house by three o'clock that afternoon.
He'd flown up from New York on his private jet, his lawyers in tow.
He found me in the kitchen, the boys finally asleep in their rooms after hours of crying and questions, me sitting at the table with my head in my hands.
He didn't say anything.
He just walked over, pulled me up, and held me.
I cried into his chest.
"I can't do this, Julian. I can't. They're scared. They don't understand why strangers are yelling at them and taking their pictures. This is exactly what I was afraid of. I wanted to protect them from this. From your world. From the money and the cameras and the lies. And now it's here. It's in our house."
He held me tighter.
"I know. I know, baby. And I am so sorry. This is my fault. All of it. Madison is using every weapon she has because she knows I won't fight back if it means hurting the boys. But that ends today."
He pulled back, tilting my chin up so I had to look at him.
His eyes were fierce.
Determined.
"I'm going to end this. Tonight. My lawyers are already filing a countersuit— breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, extortion, everything. We have the emails. We have the proof she paid the investigator. She's going to lose. Everything. But I need you to trust me. And I need you to be strong for the boys. Can you do that?"
I nodded, wiping my eyes.
"For them? Anything."
That night, Julian went live on every major news network.
He sat in a studio in Manhattan, alone, no lawyers, no PR team.
Just him.
And he told the truth.
All of it.
He told them about the kiss.
About how he'd destroyed his marriage.
About how I'd left, and how he'd spent four years searching for me.
About Madison paying the investigator.
About finding the boys.
About meeting them for the first time in a grocery store.
And then he showed a video.
A video he'd taken on his phone two nights earlier.
Leo and Ethan, sitting on his lap, both of them wearing matching dinosaur pajamas, arguing over who got the last cookie.
Leo was yelling, "I'M OLDER! I GET IT FIRST!"
Ethan was responding, very seriously, "But I ate all my broccoli. You left three pieces. Rules are rules."
And Julian, laughing, his face open and happy and real, saying, "How about we split it? Fifty-fifty. Brothers share, right?"
Both boys had nodded solemnly.
"Right," they'd chorused.
The video ended.
Julian looked into the camera.
His voice was steady.
Honest.
"Those are my sons. Leo and Ethan. They are three and a half years old. They love dinosaurs and Lego and mac and cheese. They are the best thing that ever happened to me. And for four years, I didn't know they existed. Because I made a mistake. Because I wasn't the man my wife deserved. Because I let success blind me to what really matters."
He paused.
"Madison Carter has told a lot of lies about me and my family over the last two weeks. And I'm not going to stand here and refute every single one. The truth will come out in court. But I will say this. I would trade every dollar I have, every hotel, every company, everything, for those two little boys. They are not a scandal. They are not a headline. They are my family. And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to them. To all three of them."
He looked directly into the lens.
"Audrey. If you're watching... I'm sorry. For everything. And I'm coming home."
The broadcast cut to black.
Across the country, public opinion shifted overnight.
The story was no longer about a cheating billionaire and a money-hungry runaway wife.
It was about a broken man who'd found redemption in his sons.
About a family torn apart by one mistake and four years of silence.
About love that refused to die.
Madison's lawsuits crumbled.
The emails proving she'd paid the investigator were leaked to the press.
Her reputation was destroyed.
No company would hire her.
No one in New York society would take her calls.
She vanished from the public eye, defeated.
But the damage was done.
My quiet life was over.
The bookstore was closed for a week while the paparazzi camped outside.
The boys couldn't play in the front yard.
They couldn't go to the park.
Everywhere we went, cameras followed.
One afternoon, I was folding laundry in the boys' room when Ethan climbed into bed beside me.
He was quiet.
Too quiet.
"Mommy?"
"Yeah, bug?"
"Are we bad?"
The question stopped my heart.
I dropped the shirt I was holding.
I turned to him, pulling him into my lap.
"What? No. No, baby, why would you ask that?"
He shrugged, picking at a loose thread on the comforter.
"The people with the cameras. They yell bad things. They say we're a secret. They say you and Daddy did bad things. Are we bad because we didn't know Daddy before?"
Tears burned my eyes.
I held him tighter.
"Never. You listen to me, Ethan Thomas Foster. You and your brother are the best things that ever happened to me. To Daddy. To everyone. You are not bad. You are not a secret. You are loved. So, so loved. Okay?"
He nodded, but his little face was still troubled.
"Then why are people mean to us?"
Because the world is ugly sometimes.
Because people love to build you up just to tear you down.
Because Madison wanted to hurt us, and she didn't care who got caught in the crossfire.
But I couldn't say that to a three-year-old.
"Because some people are confused," I said softly.
"They don't know our story. They don't know how much Daddy loves us. How much we love each other. But that's okay. We don't need them to understand. All that matters is us. You, me, Leo, and Daddy. That's all that matters."
He thought about this for a long moment.
And then he said, "Daddy said he's coming home. Does that mean he's going to live with us now?"
I didn't have an answer.
Julian had been traveling back and forth between New York and Maplewood for two weeks.
He'd spent every night on my couch.
We'd talked.
We'd cried.
We'd danced around the thing between us— the love that was still there, buried under four years of hurt.
But we hadn't talked about the future.
About living together.
About being a real family.
Before I could answer, the front door opened.
Julian's voice echoed through the house.
"Audrey? Boys? I'm home."
Ethan's face lit up.
He scrambled off my lap and ran down the hall.
"DADDY!"
I heard the thud as he launched himself into Julian's arms.
Followed by Leo's yell, "ME TOO! ME TOO!" and the sound of two little bodies tackling their father.
I walked to the top of the stairs.
Julian was on his knees in the entryway, both boys clinging to his neck, his face buried in their hair.
He looked up at me.
And in that look, I saw everything.
The past.
The present.
And a future I'd stopped believing was possible.
He stood up, boys still attached to him like barnacles, and walked toward the stairs.
"I have something to tell you," he said.
"All of you."
He carried the boys into the living room and sat on the couch, one on each knee.
I sat in the armchair across from them, my heart racing.
"Remember how I told you I had a big job in New York?" he asked the boys.
They nodded.
"Well... I quit."
Leo's eyes went wide.
"You quit? Like when I quit eating broccoli?"
Julian laughed.
"Exactly like that. I'm never going back. From now on... I'm here. All the time. No more airplanes. No more late nights. Just me. Here. With you. And Mommy. If that's okay with everyone."
The boys cheered so loud the windows rattled.
"YES! YES! YES!"
They tackled him backward onto the couch, covering his face in kisses.
Julian looked over their heads at me.
His eyes were questioning.
*Is this okay with you?*
I nodded.
Tears were streaming down my face.
Happy ones, this time.
It was okay.
May you like
More than okay.
It was everything I'd ever wanted.
