Page 124 of Forgotten Prejudice

“Yeah?” He seemed so happy, his smile stretching from side to side.

“I would love that, actually. But we need to sit down and talk about it further, okay?”

“Fuck, yeah, Ashy.” He bit his lips before cupping my face and planting a big-ass kiss on my forehead. “You know I love you, right?”

Whenever he told me that, I felt incredibly awkward. While I did, in some ways, feel the same, I never said it back. Now was no different, and instead of saying those three little words, which I doubted Kai even cared about, I nodded.

“I do.”

“Good.” He wrapped a thick arm around me just as Andrei walked into the kitchen.

“Hey, we’re ready to go,” Andrei said, pointing his thumb in the direction of the front door.

“Good.” I turned to face Kai. “We’ll talk more tonight, okay?”

“Sure.” He gave me that smile again that reminded me of the time we were seventeen and high on life. “Good luck today,” he added with a slap to my ass.

I groaned in frustration. He knew PDA was not allowed near the kids. But Kai was never one to follow the rules, and it was probably why I first fell for him.

Soren

“Objection,” I called, my jaw tense as my eyes set on the back of Jones’s balding head. “We have already established that Mr. Sage took the four kids into his home out of the kindness of his heart and nothing more. At this point, the prosecution’s desperate attempts to argue otherwise are plain harassment.” My whole body tightened with anger over this despicable Jones and his pathetic attempt to present Ashton in a bad light.

He was trying to show that Camilo’s alleged crime had something to do with living under Ashton’s roof, which was utter bullshit.

Ever since he’d gotten Ashton on the stand, around thirty minutes ago, it had been a series of low blows and attacks on Ashton’s character. Watching my sweet boy sitting there in a suit that was too big for him, looking as anxious as ever while attempting to do his best, physically pained me. My guts swirled, and my skin crawled with every passing second of him being treated like a common criminal. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Christian Rogers had decided to show his face in court today. That smug asshole sat a few rows behind me, and every now and then, I caught him smirking as if he ran the show. I’ll prove him wrong. The only positive thing coming out of Christian’s presence today was Camilo’s reaction. For once, the guy seemed alert to what was happening around him, and he wasn’t just sitting beside me with his eyes pinned to the floor.

“Sustained,” the judge rightfully called, forcing Jones to move on with his crap.

“What a jerk,” Jessie hissed from where he was sitting behind me, referring to Jones. At least the kid said out loud what I couldn’t. The corner of Camilo’s lips seemed to twitch a little at Jessie’s comment, but then again, it might have just been my imagination. All three kids also testified today, and they did a great job, but the prosecution knew what they were doing by questioning Ashton last.

An idea occurred to me, and I grabbed a pen to write it down, when Jones’s new question caught my attention.

“Tell me, Mr. Sage, is it true that you grew up fatherless?” the idiot asked.

“Objection, Your Honor, relevancy,” I nearly snarled, waving in his direction.

“I promise it will all make sense in a bit,” Jones explained. Sadly, the judge accepted his argument and told Ashton to answer the question.

He shifted in the chair with his hands in his lap before leaning closer toward the small mic. “My father passed away when I was seven. My mother raised me.”

“So you did grow up without a father figure?”

Ashton swallowed hard. “You could say that. But my uncle was present during my childhood,” he added, and I swore under my breath.

I told Ashton not to mention his uncle, who, apparently, was involved in a few businesses that went bankrupt and had a bad name with the IRS. Aiden, the uncle, was only a small partner in those places, but it still added shade to his name. Of course, Jones knew it as well, and he used it for his benefit.

“And where is your uncle now? Escaped overseas, maybe?”

“He didn’t escape anywhere.” Ashton’s brows pulled into a frown. “He’s traveling the world.”

Jones snorted. “Charming. Just charming. Now, then, is it true that you haven’t worked anywhere for the past ten years?”

Ashton seemed confused. “I-I run a small surfing shop.”

“A shop that’s only active for a few hours a day and hardly makes any profit,” Jones said while flipping through a few financial documents before submitting them as evidence. “Surely, you can’t expect us to believe you’re able to financially support four teenage kids, as well as yourself, and take care of your house, with what that business makes in a year?”

Shit. This was going even worse than I’d imagined.