She Got the Marriage License and I Got 99 Broken Promises Chapter 09

She Got the Marriage License and I Got 99 Broken Promises Chapter 09

I tapped the link. 

#Shocking! Insurance Titan Toppled: Nolan Hayes Facing $300 Million Fraud Probe# 

I called a friend back home and finally got the full 

story. 

After Nolan accidentally found Grandma Evelyn’s 

cremation certificate, he had gone half–crazy 

trying to track me down. 

Sabrina, furious that he had started ignoring her, 

decided to use the baby against him. 

What she probably didn’t understand was the one 

thing Nolan could never tolerate. 

He had been an orphan. His parents died when he 

was young, and he grew up in the system, bullied, 

neglected, treated like he didn’t matter. 

He had once had a best friend, someone who died, helping him, and that wound had never healed. 

That was why he always had a soft spot for kids. 

That was one of the reasons I fell for him in the 

first place. 

He would never allow anyone to use a child as 

leverage. 

That was his line. 

So Nolan took the baby away by force and had Sabrina committed to a private psychiatric facility. 

The first chance she got, she retaliated by exposing the fraudulent policy approval he had hidden years ago. 

She cried for the cameras, played the victim beautifully, and with a face like hers, attention. 

came fast. 

At first, it probably could have been buried with enough money. 

But then the rest came out. 

Someone exposed the full story of the ninety–nine times Sabrina had manipulated things to drive me 

away. 

One of those times had been at a hotel near the 

hospital. She had deliberately lured me there so I 

would witness Nolan cheating with my own eyes. 

The internet turned on both of them instantly. 

People dragged Sabrina for being calculating and 

vicious. 

They dragged Nolan for wanting everything at 

once, for trying to keep one woman in each hand 

and ending up losing both. 

The scandal blew up too far, too fast. 

His company launched an internal investigation. 

Almost overnight, Nolan found himself buried 

under massive debt. 

The man who had once looked untouchable ended 

up selling his shares and the mansion just to pay 

it back. 

Then Sabrina tried to take the baby and disappear. 

Nolan caught her. 

And during the fight over the child, the truth finally 

came out. 

The baby wasn’t his. 

She had gambled on him caring. 

Gambled on the fact that I had never had a child 

with him and convinced herself that any man 

would care about that difference. 

In a rage, Nolan nearly killed her. 

Sabrina pressed charges for assault. 

Their relationship drama became a criminal case. 

Brooke threw back a long swallow of her cocktail 

and said with grim satisfaction, “Honestly? They 

deserve each other. Let them burn.” 

I smiled faintly. 

She wasn’t wrong. 

Then the host called my name. 

Right before I stepped onto the stage, I thought 

about Grandma. 

Whenever I got hungry as a kid, she would set a 

bowl of egg fried rice in front of me and say the 

same thing every time: 

Food, shelter, clothes… there’s a reason we put eating at the top of the list. 

Because when a person was hungry, eating was 

the only problem that mattered. 

Once your stomach was full, you had the strength 

to face all the rest. 

I chose the most humble dish in my repertoire: egg fried rice. 

It was simple. Ordinary. A dish of memories and 

heat. 

No one expected much. 

Even the judges only took a token bite at first, just enough to be fair. 

But the second the food touched their tongues, 

every one of them froze. 

Something changed in their faces. 

Something softened. One of them even had tears gathering in his eyes, like the taste had pulled up a memory he hadn’t been ready for. 

By the time they came back to themselves, the 

plate in front of them was empty. 

All around me, the other contestants‘ dishes were 

sampled politely and left unfinished. 

Mine was the only one they cleaned completely. 

Of course, I was still eliminated. Against 

internationally trained chefs, I had been the 

underdog from the start. 

But that single dish became a viral sensation. 

People online argued about my loss for days, 

saying I had lost with honor, saying I deserved 

better, saying the judges had missed the point. 

Then they started showing up at my restaurant 

one after another, all asking for the same dish. 

I never thought I would see Nolan again. 

But I did. 

At my wedding to Miles.