Chapter 2

Nora POV:

The conference room at Rothschild & Partners was designed to intimidate.

Floor-to-ceiling windows. Mahogany table polished to a mirror shine. And at the head-Gerald Rothschild himself. Silver hair. Fifteen-thousand-dollar suit. The kind of calm that came from billing a thousand dollars an hour for forty years.

Amira sat beside me in her war suit-charcoal Tom Ford, razor-sharp lapels. She placed her iPad face-down on the table. Colton couldn't see the screen. That was the point.

He sat across from me. His collar was slightly wrinkled. Unusual. Colton never wrinkled.

Gerald cleared his throat. "We've reviewed the initial separation agreement. Given the duration of the marriage and Ms. Kidd's limited financial contribution to the marital estate, we believe the terms are more than fair."

Limited financial contribution.

Amira's hand brushed my knee under the table. Let me.

"Limited." She repeated the word like it was a dead insect she'd found in her salad. "That's interesting, Gerald. Let's talk about contributions."

She tapped her iPad. "Over the past three years, Farmer Capital has filed forty-seven separate compliance documents with the SEC. All of them were prepared, reviewed, or materially revised by my client."

"Mr. Farmer is the principal. Any work product-"

"Any work product created by employees belongs to the firm," Amira cut in. "But my client was never an employee, was she? No salary. No title. No equity."

She slid a document across the table.

"And yet-seventeen institutional clients have submitted notarized statements confirming that Nora Kidd was their primary contact for all substantive matters. Not Colton Farmer. Nora Kidd."

Colton's jaw tightened. I watched his fingers curl against the table's edge.

"That's a contractual dispute," Gerald said. "Not matrimonial."

"It's a valuation dispute." Amira pulled out another document. "We've retained an independent forensic accountant. Preliminary findings suggest that certain filings-particularly the Wakeman positions-bear my client's analytical fingerprints without proper attribution."

She paused. Let the silence stretch.

"If this proceeds to discovery, we will be seeking not only revised separation terms but a full accounting of my client's uncompensated contributions to the firm's valuation."

Gerald's eyes moved down the page. His professional mask held-but I saw it. The micro-tension in his jaw. The almost imperceptible pause.

"I think we should recess."

"Next week works." Amira stood. "But be advised-my client will be filing for exclusive use of the marital residence. Mr. Farmer will need to make other arrangements."

Colton shot to his feet. "That's my house."

"Your name is on the deed." Amira gathered her documents with unhurried precision. "My client's name is on seventeen client retention letters and forty-seven SEC filings. We can discuss who brings more value at our next meeting."

She walked out.

I stood to follow.

"Nora."

Colton's voice stopped me. I turned.

He was standing alone. Gerald had stepped away. Colton's hands hung at his sides. Empty. His face held an expression I'd catalogued years ago but never seen directed at me.

Fear.

"Can we talk? Just us. No lawyers."

I looked at him-really looked. The man I'd married. Still handsome. Still polished. But something behind his eyes had cracked.

"What you said about the Wakeman filings. What do you have?"

"Everything."

The word landed like a stone.

His throat moved. "Nora, if there's something wrong with those filings-"

"There's nothing wrong with them. Because I fixed them." I let the words sink in. "Three separate reporting errors in Q2. Two material omissions in year-end reconciliation. One position that should have triggered mandatory disclosure. I caught all of it. Corrected all of it. Your name went on every document. My work kept your firm out of an SEC investigation."

He was pale now. The kind of pale that had nothing to do with lighting.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"When?" My voice was calm. Clinical. "When you were at the office until midnight, too busy to answer my texts? When your mother was at our dinner table explaining why Brittney Sterling would make such a wonderful addition to the family? When you looked at me for the first time in months and said 'I want a divorce'?"

He flinched.

"I didn't hide anything, Colton. I just stopped offering. And you never asked. You never asked what I did all day. You never asked why the compliance reviews always came back clean. You never asked anything-because you didn't want to know that your empire was built by someone you considered an accessory."

His hand reached out. Dropped. "I'm sorry."

"I know."

I meant it. And it didn't matter.

"Nora, we can fix this. Whatever's in those files-"

"I'm not threatening you. I'm informing you." I picked up my bag. "Those files exist. They belong to me. And if this divorce gets ugly, they become part of the discovery record."

"What do you want?"

I looked at him-the man I'd spent three years covering for. The man who'd never once rested his hand on my stomach and asked how are you feeling.

"I want what I built."

I walked out.

Amira was waiting in the hallway. She didn't speak until the elevator doors closed.

"You okay?"

I pressed my hand against my stomach. She was kicking. Hard. As if she knew.

"He asked what I wanted."

"What did you tell him?"

"The truth." The elevator chimed. "I told him I wanted what I built. And that now he's undefended."

Amira was quiet. Then: "He looked scared. Not of the divorce. Of you."

I thought about that all the way back to Brooklyn. Colton Farmer, scared of me. The woman who ironed his shirts. Who remembered his mother's birthday.

He should be scared.

I had spent three years cleaning up his messes.

Now I was about to become the mess he couldn't clean up.

And I hadn't even shown Amira everything yet. Not the file I'd left on his desk. Not the trust documents. Not the thing I'd discovered about his mother's "restructuring" with Brittney Sterling's help.

That would come next.