and shrugged. “You’ll recover. Don’t make this uglier than it needs to be. My assistant can come by tomorrow if you’re too tired to review the paperwork.”
Too tired.
As if he were doing me a favor by outsourcing the collection of my surrender.
He adjusted his cuff, gave me one brief look that contained no softness at all, and turned for the door.
Before he left, he added, “Be reasonable, Elena. You walk away with your personal things, I keep the house, and we both move on.”
Then he walked out.
The latch clicked.
For a few seconds, I listened to the hum of the air vent and the soft beep of the monitor beside me. Somewhere in the hallway, wheels rattled over tile. A nurse laughed gently at something I couldn’t hear.
I waited until my hands stopped shaking.
Then I picked up my phone and tapped the contact saved under the fake name Elaine Spencer.
Marisol Vega answered on the second ring.
“He served me,” I said.
She exhaled once, almost amused. “From your hospital bed?”
“Yes.”
There was a brief clicking sound on her end, probably her keyboard. “Well. That helps us, actually.”
Despite everything, I let out a faint breath that could have passed for a laugh. “You sound cheerful.”
“Only because he continues to be exactly who he is. There’s more.”
I closed my eyes. “Tell me.”
“Over the last month,” Marisol said, “your husband used the shared credit line tied to the household statements to pay a venue deposit in Napa, a jeweler in Buckhead, a luxury resort package, and two business-class airline tickets under the name Brielle Kane.”
I said nothing.
The silence was answer enough.
Brielle was the woman from his office he had told me not to worry about the year before. Too young, too bright, too eager to laugh at everything he said. I had seen her once at a company fundraiser in a silver dress, standing half a step too close to him.
“He also informed the lender reviewing that wedding package,” Marisol continued, “that he planned to leverage equity from your residence once the divorce was final.”
The laugh escaped me then, involuntary and painful enough to tug hard at my stitches.
“He really said that?”
“He did. He appears to believe the house belongs to him.”
I looked across the room at the window. Late afternoon light washed the glass a dull gray. My reflection looked pale and thinner than usual, my hair flattened on one side, hospital bracelet bright against my wrist.
Two years earlier, after Gavin tried pressuring me to use my inheritance as collateral for one of his investment schemes, I had gone to Marisol for the first time.
The house was mine before I ever married him.
My grandmother had left me enough money to buy the place, a three-bedroom brick colonial with deep porches and old oak floors, in a neighborhood Gavin later liked to describe as “our area” whenever he was entertaining clients. Technically, it had always been separate property. But Marisol advised me to do more than rely on technically.
So I transferred it into Larkspur House Trust, with myself as sole beneficiary and trustee under a structure Gavin never once bothered to question because paperwork bored him.
As
