I set down my wine glass slowly, smoothing the linen napkin across my lap. ‘Richard,’ I said softly, ‘before I sign anything, there’s something you should know about the company.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Spare me the sentimental speech, Margaret.’ I smiled. ‘It’s not sentimental. It’s structural.’ I slid my phone across the table, open to an email from Goldman Sachs addressed to me as Principal Shareholder of Hartwell Industries. His face went white. Brittany leaned over, read it, and slowly pulled her hand off his thigh. ‘That’s… that’s my company,’ Richard stammered. ‘No, darling. It’s my father’s company. The one he sold to you for a dollar twenty years ago as a wedding gift, with a clause I’m sure you forgot to read. In the event of marital infidelity, all shares revert to the original family trust. Which I’ve controlled since my father passed in March.’ Richard’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. ‘You can’t prove infidelity.’ I gestured to Brittany. ‘Sweetheart, the hotel receipts your assistant submitted to accounting for the last eight months? I sign off on those expenses personally. The Plaza, the Ritz, the little place in the Hamptons.’ Brittany grabbed her purse and fled toward the door. I continued calmly. ‘My lawyers filed at four PM today. As of this morning, you no longer own a chair in that office. Security will escort you out tomorrow at nine. The penthouse reverts too — it was purchased through the trust.’ He grabbed my wrist. ‘Margaret, please, twenty years—’ I gently removed his hand. ‘Twenty years I listened. Twenty years I learned. Twenty years I waited for you to underestimate me one final time.’ I stood, dropped two hundred dollars on the table, and leaned close to his ear. ‘Keep the cheap dress comment in mind, Richard. You’ll need cheap everything now.’ I walked out into the Manhattan night, finally weightless.
