He signed the divorce papers with a smirk, his expensive pen scratching loudly against the document as he scrawled his name with a flourish. Ethan Caldwell didn’t even look at me as he pushed the papers across the mahogany table, already texting someone—I knew it was Tessa, his mistress, probably about their upcoming trip to Cabo.
“There,” he said, leaning back in his chair with that satisfied expression I’d come to recognize over seven years of marriage. “It’s done. Finally. You’re going to have to learn to fend for yourself now, Violet, instead of clinging to my career. It’s going to be a hard adjustment for you, I know. But sink or swim, right?”
I sat across from him in the sterile mediation room in downtown Chicago, dressed in the simple black dress I’d worn to my mother’s funeral three days earlier. He hadn’t attended. He’d sent flowers with a generic card signed by his assistant, claiming a crisis at work required his attention. The crisis, I knew, was a blonde named Tessa Lane and a resort reservation he didn’t want to miss.
My hands rested on the table, covering a cream-colored envelope sealed with red wax. It still carried the faint scent of lavender—my mother’s scent. The return address was embossed in modest black ink: Harrington and Blythe LLP. To Ethan, it was just another piece of legal debris. To anyone who understood the true architecture of power in this city, that name was a gatekeeper to worlds Ethan only dreamed of entering.
Judge Marlene Keats, a woman with steel-gray hair and eyes that had witnessed too many broken promises to be surprised by anything, adjusted her glasses and reached for the papers. “The terms seem standard. Prenuptial agreement enforced. No alimony. Separate property remains separate. If you’re ready to sign, Mrs. Caldwell, we can conclude this.”
I didn’t pick up the pen. Instead, I slid the envelope forward.
“Before I sign,” I said, my voice steady despite the storm building in my chest, “there’s a document that must be entered into the record. It concerns a change in my financial status that occurred seventy-two hours ago. Under disclosure laws regarding division of assets, this must be reviewed.”
Ethan let out a sharp, derisive laugh, his thumbs still flying across his phone screen. “Oh, come on, Violet. What is it? Did your mother leave you her collection of antique thimbles? Or maybe that old sedan? Just keep it. I don’t want anything from your side of the family. I just want out.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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