Sign the papers, sweetheart, or you walk out of here with nothing but the

I opened the folder I’d brought with me. Just a thin manila one. Daniel rolled his eyes. “What’s that, your grocery list?”

I slid the first page across. His lawyer picked it up, and his jaw moved before his mouth did. “This is… a shareholder registry.”

“Mhm,” I said softly. “Hart Holdings. The parent company that owns sixty-two percent of Daniel’s firm.”

Daniel laughed. “That company belongs to my father.”

“It did,” I agreed. “Until your father had his stroke two years ago and you stopped visiting him. I didn’t stop. I drove to Connecticut every Sunday. I read him the papers. I helped him eat. And six months ago, before he passed, he transferred his controlling shares into a trust. Guardian of that trust… is me.”

The color drained from Daniel’s face in real time, like someone pulling a plug.

“That’s impossible,” his lawyer stammered. “We would have been notified—”

“You were,” I said. “You just didn’t read past page one. You were too busy drafting a settlement that gives me nothing.”

I slid the second page over. A board resolution. Effective this morning.

“As of nine a.m., the board voted to remove Daniel Hart as CEO. Cause: misuse of company funds. Specifically, the apartment on West 74th. The one you put Vanessa in. The one you charged to corporate housing.”

Daniel shot up. “Eliza—”

“Sit down,” I said, and for the first time in twelve years, he did.

I stood instead. Smoothed my cardigan. Picked up the divorce papers his lawyer had pushed at me, and tore them, slowly, right down the middle.

“I’ll have my own attorney send a new draft,” I said. “You’ll keep the watch your father gave you. Everything else — the company, the brownstone, our daughter’s full custody — comes home with me.”

At the door I turned back. He was still sitting, mouth open, a man finally seeing the woman he’d spent a decade calling decorative.

“Oh, Daniel,” I said gently. “Don’t embarrass yourself.”