He Let Our Daughter Die, I Became A Tycoon's Bride novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Custody Hearing

Penelope's POV

"Put the pen down, Neil," I said.

He had picked it up, and he looked at me with a bleary little smile.

"Come to beg?"

"I'll see you at nine."

"You'll lose."

"Maybe."

I turned to Cillian, who hadn't moved from beside the desk.

"You staked your company," I said. "You never asked me."

"No."

"We talk after."

"Yes."

His gray eyes were red at the rims.

I walked to the elevator without looking at Neil again, because if I did I would not make it to the courthouse.

At nine the courtroom was full.

A hospital lawyer had taken the first bench, and the nurse sat at the back with her coat in her lap, and beside her, white and shaking in a borrowed sweater, sat Kirsten.

Cillian's lawyer stood at my side.

Neil sat at the other table in a fresh navy suit, shaved and calm, with his own lawyer and Marjorie behind him in her pearls.

The judge was a gray-haired woman with a flat voice and a flat stare.

"This is an emergency petition for sole custody of a six-year-old," she said. "I've read the filings. Mr. Garner's counsel first."

Neil's lawyer stood.

"Your Honor, my client's wife abandoned the family home, took a minor child across state lines, and married another man while still married to my client."

"That marriage is contested," the judge said.

"There's more. Mrs. Garner has been publicly unstable. She accused her husband of murder on a stage."

"Of withholding blood," I said.

"Mrs. Garner."

I sat down.

"My client is a loving father who wants his daughter home," the lawyer went on. "And he has withdrawn consent for surgery in a city five hours from the family's doctors, to protect the child from a household that is, frankly, a spectacle."

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