Chapter 4
Jerome arranged the meeting himself, framing it as a courtesy sit-down to finalize the divorce terms, at Scott's own house, on his own turf, exactly where he wanted the upper hand. Scott greeted us in the living room looking like a man who'd already spent the money in his head, Kayla curled beside him on the cream sofa with white roses on the glass coffee table between us, the kind of arrangement you buy when you're celebrating something.
I sat across from them and set the signed divorce papers down first, calm, unhurried. Then I reached into my bag and dropped the thick copy of the will onto the glass table with a sharp slap, the highlighted paragraph facing Scott.
He stopped mid-sentence, halfway through some comment about wiring my settlement by Friday.
Kayla's hand flew to her mouth. Scott leaned forward, confusion sliding fast into something nervous.
"What is this?" he said.
I smiled, faint and steady, no fear in it at all. "The part you forgot to read."
I slid the will another inch closer across the glass. He grabbed it, scanned the highlighted line, and I watched every ounce of color drain out of his face in real time.
Kayla stepped back off the couch. "Scott. What does it say?"
I lifted the signed divorce papers just enough for both of them to see my signature already dried on the last page. "It says you only inherit if you stay married. Your grandmother wrote a five-year clause into that trust, Scott. Any divorce initiated by you before the term ends reverts the entire estate to the secondary beneficiary."
His mouth opened and nothing came out.
"You didn't even read your own inheritance," I said. "You were in such a hurry to throw me out that you never noticed whose name was listed as the secondary beneficiary."
I turned the last page of the will toward him myself, so he wouldn't have to go looking for it in the state he was in.
Mine.
Scott looked at Kayla. Kayla looked at the white roses she'd clearly bought to celebrate a wedding that was no longer the celebration she thought it was. Scott looked back at me, trapped between a document he couldn't undo and a fiancée who had just done the math on her own future in under four seconds.
I stood, smoothed my blazer, and picked my bag up off the floor.
"Congratulations," I said. "You rushed yourself out of seven point three million dollars, and you're about to have a baby with someone whose name isn't on any of it."
May you like
I walked out through the front door I used to have a key to, past the porch swing that would never again be mine to sit on, and into a life that, for the first time in eight years, belonged entirely to me. Jerome was already drafting the transfer paperwork before I made it to the car. Six weeks later, the estate cleared, every dollar of it, into an account with only my name on it.
Scott called eleven times that first week. I let every single one go to voicemail.
