PART 2
Harry Harrison had served as my family’s attorney since I was seventeen, meaning he had guided me through my father’s death, my first inheritance-tax disaster, my marriage agreements, and every terrible decision I had stubbornly refused to admit was terrible.
When I entered his Midtown office wearing a cream-colored coat, oversized sunglasses, and the expression of a woman who had already buried someone inside her heart, he never asked whether I wanted tea.
He shut the door.
“What did he do?” Harry asked.
I placed the printed screenshots on his desk.
The Hamptons photograph.
The perfume receipt I found inside the glove compartment.
The hotel charge David had hidden through a shell LLC.
Then I laid the deed to the Upper East Side townhouse on top.
Harry read everything in silence. His mouth tightened.
“Catherine.”
“I want him out.”
“Divorce?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
I smiled.
It was not a gentle smile.
“First, I want him to understand the difference between what he built and what I allowed him to stand on.”
Harry leaned backward in his chair. “That sounds expensive.”
“For him.”
He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Tell me exactly what you want.”
“The townhouse belongs to me. It was a wedding gift from my father. David never bothered reading the deed because he assumed everything beautiful in his life automatically belonged to him. I want it sold quietly. Pocket listing. Cash buyer. Fast.”
“That can be done.”
“The Mercedes title is in my name.”
Harry raised an eyebrow.
“He thinks the car belongs to him because he drives it,” I said. “I want it recovered once I leave.”
“Go on.”
“Our investments. I want my premarital assets separated immediately. Everything legally mine gets transferred today. Everything jointly owned gets frozen or audited.”
Harry studied me carefully. “You understand that once he realizes what is happening, he’ll become desperate.”
“He pushed me into the back seat of my own life,” I said. “Desperate is exactly where I want him.”
For a moment, Harry looked at me not as his client, but as the young woman who had cried in his office lobby after burying her father.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not physically.”
That would change the following day.
At that moment, I still believed betrayal had limits. I believed humiliation was the worst thing he could do. I believed there was still an invisible line inside David, one final boundary labeled wife, history, respect.
I was wrong.
I went home and performed my role.
When David returned from his fake Chicago trip, he kissed my forehead with lips carrying the faint taste of another woman’s lipstick and handed me a bag of airport popcorn.
“Garrett,” he said cheerfully. “Your favorite.”
“My favorite is honesty.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“Nothing. Dinner is in the oven.”
He smiled, relieved that I had apparently returned to being useful.
That had always been David’s favorite version of me: elegant, silent, forgiving, and available to feed him.
He ate pot roast at the kitchen island while I watched him from the staircase. His tan glowed beneath the kitchen lights. Not a Chicago tan.
A Hamptons tan.
He hummed while eating and scrolled through his phone with a smug, boyish smile.
“Good trip?” I asked.
“Exhausting. You have no idea.”
“I’m sure.”
He glanced up. Something in my voice unsettled him, though not enough to investigate. David had survived for years on my emotional labor. He had become lazy from being loved too completely.
“I’m going to bed early,” he said. “Big charity auction tomorrow night. We got VIP seats.”
“I know.”
“You’re coming?”
“Of course.”
He smiled again. “Good. Wear the blue dress.”
“I sold it.”
His fork paused. “Why?”
“It didn’t fit anymore.”
That was true.
Not with the new steel growing inside my spine.
The following afternoon, I brought beef stew to his office.
It was not an act of love.
It was bait.
His receptionist greeted me with the familiar warmth reserved for wives who once decorated the office Christmas tree and remembered everyone’s children.
“Mr. Sterling is in his office, Mrs. Sterling.”
“I know.”
The executive floor was quiet. Lunchtime. Thick carpeting. Frosted glass walls. The kind of silence that felt expensive.
David’s office door stood slightly open.
Laughter spilled out.
A woman’s giggle.
A man’s low, hungry laugh.
I pushed the door open.
Cecilia sat on my husband’s lap.
Her blouse hung partially unbuttoned. Her legs crossed over his. She fed him slices of fruit from a plastic container, creating some ridiculous fantasy of innocence and temptation.
David’s hand rested on her thigh.
He froze.
Cecilia screamed and knocked over his coffee.
Hot liquid splashed across paperwork and lightly touched her sleeve. She shrieked as though her arm had been severed.
David jumped to his feet.
“Cece! Oh my God, are you burned?”
I stood in the doorway holding beef stew.
My husband had been caught with his secretary sitting on his lap in his office, and his first instinct was to protect her from coffee.
“Are we finished performing?” I asked.
David turned toward me with such fury that, for a brief moment, I did not recognize him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted.
“With me?”
“You barged in and scared her!”
“I walked into my husband’s office.”
“You did that on purpose.”
Cecilia clutched her arm and cried. “Please don’t fight because of me.”
David stepped toward me. “Look what you did.”
I looked at Cecilia’s barely pink sleeve, then at his face.
And I laughed.
Only once.
A quiet, disbelieving sound.
David shoved me.
Hard.
My heel caught the rug. My back struck the floor. Pain exploded through my shoulder, but I made no sound. The office became horrifyingly quiet.
Even Cecilia stopped acting.
David stared at his own hand as though it belonged to someone else.
Then shame transformed into anger.
“Get up,” he snapped. “Stop embarrassing yourself.”
I stood slowly.
I straightened my skirt. Raised my chin. Looked directly into his eyes.
For twelve years, I had begged, compromised, forgiven, explained, sacrificed, and softened.
Not anymore.
“Thank you,” I said.
David frowned. “What?”
“Thank you for making this easy.”
He stepped backward.
I set the stew down on the glass table.
“Give it to security,” I said. “I’m sure they’re less disgusted by food prepared by a weathered wife.”
The color drained from his face.
“Cat—”
But I had already left.
Inside the elevator, I texted Alex Whitman.
Alex was an old college friend, hedge-fund royalty, and the only man who had ever loved me without trying to possess me. I had already told him enough to prepare the next move.
Plan B, I typed. Tonight.
His response arrived three seconds later.
Showtime.
