“Not a bitter mother who’ll spend their whole childhood taking her anger out on them.”
I felt the blood leave my face.
I didn’t cry.
I opened the folder and read it, line by line.
Nathaniel expected begging.
His family expected a scene.
Vivienne had her phone out, angled, waiting to catch my humiliation.
I just read.
The agreement said I’d accept one hundred fifty thousand dollars in exchange for sole custody.
Buried three pages in was a clause stripping my right to ever audit certain accounts inside the Cross family real estate holding company.
This wasn’t a settlement.
It was a silencing.
I looked up. “Are you absolutely certain this is what you want, Nathaniel?”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
I glanced at the security camera mounted in the corner.
At the nurse.
At the hospital social worker near the door.
At twenty relatives who had chosen, every one of them, to stand here and watch.
I reached into my bag and took out a pen.
“Renee, don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Nathaniel said.
“Just sign it so we can all move forward.”
I signed every page.
The breath Nathaniel let out was almost a laugh.
Afterward, I kissed my sons’ foreheads, one and then the other.
I asked the nurse to wheel me back to my room.
Nathaniel gathered the folder like a man collecting a trophy.
Vivienne slipped her arm through his.
Before leaving, Regina bent close.
“We’ll be at your house tomorrow morning for the babies.”
I said nothing.
They believed my signature meant I’d surrendered.
They had no idea I’d spent six months preparing for exactly this moment.
Part 2: Six Months Earlier
I need to go back.
I married Nathaniel Cross four years ago.
I was twenty-nine.
He was thirty-three, the golden son of Cross Realty Group.
