Her looting my apartment.
Her cheering while Julian demanded half my life.
“No,” I said.
Elias waited.
“We let him walk into court first.”
It was not mercy.
It was architecture.
By the time trial arrived, I had become excellent at waiting.
The courtroom on that humid Tuesday morning smelled of polished wood, old paper, and expensive cologne. The spectators who had come to watch the unraveling of a high-profile divorce filled the benches with the eager stillness of people attending other people’s pain for entertainment.
I wore charcoal.
Simple. Tailored. Nothing flashy.
Julian, naturally, dressed like a man auditioning for his own biography.
His attorney opened by painting me as a neglectful wife who had sacrificed the marriage on the altar of ambition. He spoke of Julian’s “emotional deprivation” with straight-faced seriousness, as if my failure to keep his ego fully moisturized had created actionable damages.
Then he made the demand.
Half the company.
Half the trust.
The laugh.
The envelope.
The judge’s laugh.
And then we were there, at the edge of the cliff, with Judge Mercer reading Julian’s own postnup back to him.
“You drafted this agreement yourself?” she asked.