Instead, he said quietly, almost with pride, “I’ve already changed the locks on that Malibu place. Yeah, the thirty-million-dollar one. If you don’t like it, we can just get divorced.”
For a moment, I thought I had misheard him. His tone wasn’t angry or joking—it was calculated, almost territorial, as if he expected my grief to make me compliant. My heart pounded, not from sorrow but from shock. At my father’s funeral, he chose to talk about property and divorce.
I didn’t respond immediately. I let his words settle, bitter and heavy. Then, unexpectedly, a laugh escaped me—sharp, uncontrollable, almost hysterical. I covered my mouth, horrified, but I couldn’t stop it. Michael misread it as agreement, squeezing my hand like we had shared some clever understanding.
But my laughter had nothing to do with him. In that single sentence, he had revealed more about himself than I had seen in our entire marriage. And suddenly, my father hadn’t just left me an asset—he had left me clarity.
And that clarity was about to unravel everything.