MOMENTS AFTER THE DIVORCE, I TERMINATED ALL 31 OF MY IN-LAWS’ SPIES FROM THE FIRM—THAT EVENING, MY MOTHER-IN-LAW BARGED IN AND DEMANDED I REVERSE IT.

The next morning, at 6:30 AM, my phone buzzed. It was Julian.

Elena, please. We need to talk. Just you and me. No lawyers, no mothers. The coffee shop on 4th street in twenty minutes. If you ever loved me, just give me this.

I stared at the screen. A part of me—the part that had spent five years trying to make him happy—wanted to ignore it. But the new me, the CEO-in-waiting who had just declared war, saw an opportunity.

I put on a sharp, tailored navy suit, slipped a high-definition digital voice recorder into my inside pocket, and drove to the coffee shop.

Julian was sitting in a booth in the back, looking miserable. He hadn't shaved, and his eyes were red-rimmed. When I slid into the booth across from him, he reached out to touch my hand. I pulled it back, resting it on the table.

"What do you want, Julian?" I asked coldly.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I never wanted it to go this far. You have to believe me. Mom… she’s obsessed. She’s always looked down on your family’s money because it’s 'new' money. She thought we deserved Vance Logistics."

"You thought you deserved it," I corrected him. "You let her plant spies. You let them steal from the company that put the roof over our head. You gaslit me, Julian. You made me think I was crazy."

"I was trying to protect you!" he pleaded, leaning in. "If I hadn't gone along with it, Mom would have cut me off. She threatened to write me out of the trust. I was trapped, Elena. I just wanted to keep the peace. You have to stop this lawsuit. If you file it, my family goes bankrupt. Please, just let them keep their jobs. We can put them in departments where they can't do any damage."

I stared at him, truly seeing him for the first time. He wasn't a mastermind. He was a coward. A weak, spineless man who would sell out his own wife to avoid an argument with his mother.

"Julian," I said softly, leaning closer. "Did you know your mother was faking documents to frame my father for a union bribe?"

He hesitated, looking down at his coffee cup. "She said... she said it was just an insurance policy. Just in case you guys tried to fire everyone. She promised she’d never use it."

Click.

Mentally, I smiled. I had it on tape. He just admitted to knowledge of the blackmail and the forged documents.

I stood up, smoothing my jacket. "I didn't come here to reconcile, Julian. I came here to see if there was a shred of a decent man left in you. There isn't."