Page 40 of My Girl to Take

“At first, I stayed quiet because I was afraid you’d take Kiera away from me,” he continues, his voice steady despite the strain. “Then I simply stopped caring, as long as you stayed out of my life.”

I was never alone.

“But I kept track,” he adds, nodding slightly toward his lawyer. “Private investigators. Records. Documentation.”

Ivy’s face pales.

Garth turns briefly to Logan. “I didn’t know about the theft,” he says. “But you did. And you found it. Thank you.”

Something shifts in Logan’s expression, subtle but real.

Then Garth looks back at Ivy. “I demand a divorce.”

The room erupts.

“You can’t do that!” Ivy snaps, her voice rising sharply. “If you divorce me, I’ll take half of everything!”

His lawyer steps forward calmly. “Two corrections, Mrs. Edwards. The first is that you don’t own any part of your husband’s shares and never have. Edwards Capital Management was founded eleven years before your marriage. It’s separate property. Whatever you’ve been told, or told yourself, has no basis.”

“That’s not—”

“The second,” he continues, “is this.” He hands her a document. “A prenuptial agreement, signed by you, witnessed, and never contested. It provides that in the event of infidelity, you forfeit any claim to marital assets. You’ll find your signature on page nine.”

Ivy snatches the paper, scanning it, her expression twisting as the reality sinks in.

“Then what am I doing on this board?”

“Sitting in a seat my client appointed you to eleven years ago and has never gotten around to removing,” the lawyer says. “That’s the extent of it. It carries no ownership. It’s a courtesy, and it ends this afternoon.”

“This is a trick,” she spits.

“It’s a consequence,” Garth replies.

She loses it. Completely.

Her hand lashes out, aimed straight for Garth, but I move before I can think. I step between them, catching her wrist mid-motion, the force of it jarring but not enough to stop me.

“Don’t,” I say sharply.

Her eyes snap to mine. And then, she laughs. Bitter. Cruel.

“You think you matter?” she sneers. “You’re nothing. You always were. I stayed because of the money, not because of you.”

The words hit. But they don’t break me. Not anymore.

“I know,” I say.

And I do. That’s the strange part. I’ve known since I was young, so hearing her say it out loud in a room full of people costs me nothing at all, because it isn’t news.

What lands is something else entirely.

She has just told a board of directors, at volume, that her daughter was never worth anything to her.

Which means nobody in this room believes for one second that she’d have made me a partner in anything.

Security moves in quickly, pulling her back, dragging her away as she continues shouting.

The chaos soon settles into silence, and everything feels different. Lighter. Cleaner.