Page 106 of The Best Bad Decision

“Look at me, baby.” His smile settled me back to the concrete base he’d laid out for me at the very beginning. “The past doesn’t matter. What-ifs don’t matter. The only thing that matters are the decisions we make together.”

Together.

Because I belonged to him…and I was going to be the best bad decision he’d ever made.

Epilogue

Atlee

Casimir was going to fly over the table if Valerie kept whispering to the baby about Daddy. She was clearly just fucking with everyone because I wasn’t sure if she was talking about me, the idiot from Italy she cheated on me with, or whoever was the Asian guy who’d actually fathered the kid.

No matter what, it was legally and socially clear that I wasn’t the father, and we were at the point where as long as she left me alone I didn’t care who she labeled as the father.

“Are you ready to sign?” The lawyer we’d hired to mediate the chaos of the trust was as tired of us as we were of him, but he was neutral and didn’t seem to like any of us, which helped get everything organized.

Casimir thought he just had a very dry way of presenting himself but I was pretty sure he thought my parents and Valerie were greedy, Casimir was a pain in the ass, and I was stupid.

He was probably right.

“Yes.” I answered firmly without adding any additional details because my lawyer made it clear I volunteered nothing.

Valerie on the other hand couldn’t seem to help herself. “I just want to make sure our place in the family is taken care of.”

Good grief.

Verbally wandering through a rehash of the last half an hour as her lawyer rolled her eyes next to her, she finally smiled at Mr. Bradley who I thought she’d decided should be her next victim. He seemed to be smarter than all of us and gay by Casimir’s radar, which would always be better than mine, so there was no way he’d fall for it.

“No.” Answering another pointless question that just seemed designed to get attention and fuck with everyone, he raised one eyebrow. “Are you claiming you’d like us to restart negotiations?”

Before anyone else could groan or roll their eyes, he continued and glared at Valerie and her lawyer. “Please remember that unless you have a legitimate concern for the changes, the cost of my time will come directly from your portion of your settlement.”

Because she’d wasted enough of our time already that the clause needed to be added a couple of weeks into the negotiations.

Ha.

She remembered he charged three times what her own newbie lawyer cost.

Her left eye twitched.

It was the only clue to how frustrated she was about the whole situation, but one glance from her newest lawyer and a sigh from my mother got my ex to finally shut up. “I’m ready.”

I thanked every deity I could think of as Casimir let out a methodically slow breath that was probably accompanied by silent counting in his head. I’d told him that he didn’t have to come with me, but we had the same conversation before every meeting.

He didn’t have to come but he was going to.

He wanted to support me and he didn’t want me to accidentally give away my future because I was tired of dealing with greedy assholes.

Once…I’d thought about agreeing to anything they wanted and signing my rights away to get it over with once, but it was enough to drive Casimir insane on my behalf, mostly because I hadn’t actually wanted to handle it that way. So my Dom was going to protect me from myself even if it raised his blood pressure to a startling level.

He’d been really patient the first six months of the negotiations, so I was impressed. Casimir on the other hand thought he should’ve had endless patience, but that’d ended when Valerie had tried to give me the baby in the first meeting after he was born.

He’d calmly reminded her that if we got a restraining order because she was crazy, CPS would probably step in. I wasn’t sure she cared about that, but the possibility of that ruining her chances of getting the money scared her into behaving better.

“Ms. Hart?” Mr. Bradley waited until Valerie had aimed her I’m so innocent smile in his direction. “I just want to make sure you understand that once you’ve signed and the initial transfer has been made you are forbidden from having any contact with your ex-husband or any of his current or future partners, as well as anyone from his place of employment. If you are found by the court to be harassing him in any way, the monthly stipend you are receiving will stop.”

That twitch came back but she did a remarkable job of not dropping her act. “Yes, Mr. Bradley. I understand.”

I was pretty sure she was going to give him a twitch next.