“Enough,” I said. “Enough to ruin you. Professionally. Financially. Maybe legally, if I were inclined to push it.”
His eyes flicked up to mine, searching for something. Mercy, maybe. Or nostalgia. Some sign that the woman he’d married would swoop in now and say she couldn’t possibly go through with it.
“What do you want?” he asked, the last of his bravado gone.
“Divorce papers are being delivered to your office this afternoon,” I said. “My lawyer has already drafted a settlement agreement.”
He swallowed hard. “What kind of settlement?”
“One that I think you’ll find… generous,” I said. “Considering the alternative.”
His mouth twisted. “What alternative?”
I leaned forward slightly, my voice calm. “The alternative where I take all of this”—I tapped the stack of documents—“to your board of directors. To the regulatory bodies. To the IRS. The alternative where you don’t get to resign quietly and ‘pursue other opportunities,’ but instead get to explain to a judge why you thought siphoning company money into a Cayman Islands account was a good idea.”
His face had taken on a faint greenish tinge. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said softly. “I would. If you force me to. If you try to fight me on this. If you drag this out and make it uglier than it needs to be.” I sat back, folding my arms. “Or—and this is the part where I’m being generous—you sign the settlement agreement by Friday, you keep your mouth shut, and I keep certain envelopes sealed.”
His gaze dropped to the papers again. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head, the frantic calculations. The house. The kids. His job. His reputation. His ego.
“When did you get so ruthless?” he asked eventually, the question almost a murmur.
I thought of all the nights I’d stared at the ceiling while he snored beside me. Of the hours I’d spent in lawyers’ offices and accountants’ conference rooms. Of the moment, sitting alone in my car in a grocery store parking lot, when I realized I was done playing the good wife who kept everyone else’s secrets.
“I learned from the best,” I said.
We looked at each other for a long moment.
“You have until Friday,” I repeated. “If you sign the papers, you walk away with enough to start over. You keep your job—at least until someone else notices those discrepancies. You get to pretend this was all amicable. If you don’t…”
“You’ll destroy me,” he finished.
“No,” I said quietly. “You destroyed yourself. I’m just deciding whether to watch.”
He closed his eyes briefly, like a man standing on the edge of a cliff. When he opened them, he looked… older. Not just tired, but aged, as if the last twelve hours had pulled all the youthful arrogance right out of him.
“Can I… see the kids?” he asked, the question catching.
“They’re at camp,” I said. “They’ll be back next week. By then, this will be… clearer. We’ll figure out how to tell them.” My voice softened despite myself. “I’m not going to keep them from you, Marcus. I’m not you. I don’t use people’s love as a leverage point.”
He nodded slowly, absorbing the blow wrapped in that truth. “I’ll… shower,” he muttered. “Change. Then go into the office.”
“You do that,” I said. “You have a lot to think about before those papers arrive.”
As he stood, moving like his bones hurt, I picked up my phone.
“Oh, and Marcus?” I added casually.
He paused in the doorway. “What?”
“Tell Jessica,” I said, “that Brad says congratulations. He’s always wanted to be a father.”
He stared at me, horror and disbelief flickering across his face, and then he turned away, walking down the hall like a man heading toward an execution.
I opened a new message thread and typed quickly.
By the way, Brad says congratulations. He’s always wanted to be a father.
I hit send.
Within seconds, my screen lit up with a flurry of incoming texts—long, rambling messages alternating between anger and desperate apology. I scrolled through the first few until the words blurred together, then powered off the phone.
Let them sort themselves out, I thought, as I returned to my coffee and the view of the garden. I had my own future to plan.
The next few days passed in a strange, suspended clarity.
On the surface, life went on. I went to the grocery store, exchanged pleasantries with the cashier who commented on the weather. I answered emails from my team—because despite what Marcus liked to imply at parties, I did have a career of my own. I oversaw a marketing campaign, signed off on a budget, scheduled a dentist appointment for Josh.
Underneath, wheels were turning.
Diana kept me updated with a steady stream of emails and brief calls.
“He received the papers,” she said on Wednesday, her tone crisp. “He hasn’t formally responded yet, but his lawyer reached out to say they’re reviewing the terms.”
“And?” I asked.
“And I’m very curious to see if they try to come back with a counteroffer,” she said dryly. “Considering what we have.”
“What we have” sat in a fireproof safe in my home office—a neat row of labeled envelopes. One for the board. One for the IRS. One for the regulatory agencies. One for the media, if it ever came to that. And one more, the one I hadn’t told Marcus about yet, sealed in thick cream paper.
“You sure you don’t want to push harder?” Diana had asked me the day we finalized the settlement proposal. “With what we’ve uncovered, we could go for blood.”
I’d considered it. The image of Marcus in court, the company unraveling, his name dragged through the mud. There was a raw, vindictive part of me that wanted to watch it all burn.
