this easy in the end.”

Sandra let out a short laugh.

“Easy? She didn’t have much leverage.

David’s moving on.

This time he’ll have a proper family legacy.”

The mediator shifted in her chair.

Catherine’s lawyer, who had spent weeks asking her not to engage with insults, did not even look surprised.

David leaned back, confident enough now to be careless.

“The condo was mine before the marriage.

The car too.

We don’t own anything jointly worth fighting over.”

For a moment Catherine only looked at him.

Nothing jointly worth fighting over.

That was what he called the years she had spent doing his payroll on a folding table in their first apartment, when Monroe Digital had been one investor pitch away from dying.

It was what he called the nights she stayed up balancing invoices because he could not afford an accountant.

It was what he called the meals, the childcare, the unpaid labor, the emotional smoothing, the constant rearranging of herself around his ambitions.

“And the kids,” David added with a shrug, “if Catherine wants to take them, she can.

Less complication for me.”

Megan nodded as if he had made a clever business decision.

“Exactly.

Clean break.”

Sandra sniffed.

“Besides, she should be practical.

No serious man is lining up to marry a divorced woman with two small children.”

The cruelty was so naked it became almost absurd.

Catherine felt something inside her separate from the room entirely.

Not numbness.

Distance.

The kind that comes when you finally see people clearly enough to stop negotiating with them.

She rose, opened her handbag, and set a ring of keys on the table.

“These are the house keys,” she said.

David glanced down.

“Good.

Saves time.”

Then Catherine placed two navy-blue passports beside them.

His head came up.

“What’s that?”

“The children’s passports,” she said.

“Their visas were approved last week.”

Silence spread through the room so abruptly it felt physical.

David stared at her.

“What visas?”

“I’m taking Aiden and Chloe to London.”

Megan’s laugh came out too fast and died halfway.

“You’re what?”

“The children are enrolled in school there,” Catherine said.

“We leave today.”

David’s expression hardened first into disbelief, then something less stable.

“You can’t just decide that.”

“I already did.”

Megan stepped forward.

“Do you have any idea what London costs?”

Catherine turned her gaze on her.

“That is not your concern.”

At that exact moment a black Mercedes GLS pulled up outside the building.

Through the office window they saw the uniformed driver step out and circle to the rear door.

It was such a small interruption, and yet it rearranged the air inside the room.

A minute later the receptionist led the driver to the doorway.

He inclined his head.

“Miss Hale, the car is ready.”

David stood so quickly his chair rolled back.

“What is this?”

He sounded less angry than confused, and that confusion mattered more.

Catherine had spent years letting him think she was limited by him.

She had hidden her range because every time he felt small next to someone else’s power, he lashed out.

It had been easier, especially with children, to let him believe he was the axis of their world.

Until it wasn’t.

“Is this some kind of performance?” he asked.

Catherine crossed to the