My wife looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I want the house, the cars, the business—everything.” She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t apologizing. She was demanding, like she was ordering something off a menu, like fourteen years of marriage, two kids, and everything I’d built with my own hands was just a transaction she was ready to close.
My lawyer grabbed my arm so hard I thought he’d leave a bruise. Hugh Pembrook had practiced family law for thirty years. He’d seen nasty divorces. He’d seen spouses try to destroy each other. But when I told him what I was about to do, the color drained from his face.
“Donnie, don’t do this,” he said. “We can fight. We should fight. She’s not entitled to half of what she’s asking for.”
I looked at him. Then I looked at Nora sitting across the conference table with her attorney, that smug little smile on her face—the same face I used to kiss goodnight, the same woman I held when her mother died, the same person who swore before God and our families that she’d stand by me through everything.
“Give it all to her,” I said.
Hugh dropped his pen. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. The house, the cars, the business. Give her everything she wants.”
Nora’s smile flickered. She wasn’t expecting that. Her lawyer leaned over and whispered something in her ear, and she nodded slowly, like a cat who’d just cornered a mouse.
She thought she’d broken me. She thought I was surrendering. Everyone did.
My mother called me that night in tears. Karen Sutler raised two boys on her own after my father died. She worked double shifts as a nurse. She sacrificed everything so Boyd and I could have a future. And now she was watching her youngest son hand over his entire life to a woman who didn’t deserve a single cent of it.
“Donovan, please,” she begged. “Your father built that company from nothing. He poured his heart into Sutler and Sons. You can’t just give it away. You can’t.”
“Mom, I need you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” Her voice cracked. “Honey, you’re not thinking straight. You’re hurt. You’re angry. Let me call Boyd. Let us help you.”
“I’m not angry, Mom. Not anymore.” I swallowed. “And I promise you, I know exactly what I’m doing.”
She didn’t believe me. I could hear it— that tremor of fear, the one that said she thought her son had finally snapped under the weight of betrayal.
The story doesn’t end here –
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