Fifteen years of everything I'd given had become a joke.
And Julian James had made me the biggest fool in it.
I sat in Natalie Ward's law office and placed the photo of the marriage certificate on the desk. I laid out everything I'd learned, detail by detail.
Then I asked her one thing.
"In a situation like this."
"What are my chances?" My voice was steady, like I was making small talk. "Julian and I built the company from nothing. Our shares are equal, assets split fifty-fifty, everything transparent. But then there's Lucille."
I tapped the desk, thinking of the three-million-dollar bracelet and the apartment that cost over a million.
"I don't intend to let anyone walk away with a single thing they don't deserve."
"Climbing over my bones to live the good life? That's not how the world works. That's not how any of this works."
I looked Natalie dead in the eye.
"I want them to pay."
"But," Natalie was seething on my behalf, yet she put on her professional hat, "your company is at a critical stage of its IPO. If a scandal breaks now—"
"I don't care."
"Then that's all I need to hear!"
Natalie thumped her chest.
"I will see this through to the end with you."