I lifted my head and looked him straight in the eye. I didn’t try to hide his contempt.
“Nora, it’s been three years since you married into this family.”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered, my voice barely audible in the cavernous room.
“You know how Julian treated you. You know your place here. You were a momentary lapse in judgment, a phase he finally outgrew.”
He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a check that was already written and signed.
He slammed it down on the desk. It slid toward me, light as a feather, heavy as a mountain.
One hundred twenty million dollars.
“You don’t fit in his world,” Arthur said, enunciating each word precisely. “Take this, sign the papers, and get out. That’s enough for you and your pathetic family to live in luxury for the rest of your lives.”
The insult stabbed me like a needle to the heart.
My pathetic family.
M
My father, a high school teacher who worked two jobs so I could put myself through college.
My mother, a nurse who cared for men for thirty years.
boxes who couldn’t afford better healthcare.
Pathetic.
My body trembled, but I kept my face neutral. I looked at Julian, searching for a glimmer of something.
Regret? Guilt? A simple memory of the nights we spent together, promises whispered in the dark?
Nothing.
He didn’t even blink. His thumb scrolled, scrolled, scrolled through everything that mattered more than this moment.
My heart died in that moment, in that office.
Three years of patience and devotion, three years of silent meals and indifference, three years of hoping he’d remember why he married me, had boiled down to a hundred and twenty million dollar judgment.
I felt a bitterness in my throat and swallowed it.
I looked at Arthur, and to his obvious surprise, I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I didn’t throw the bill in his face.
I smiled.
A small, quiet smile that seemed to bother him more than the tears.
I placed my hand on my belly, where four tiny lives were just beginning to emerge.
A surprise I’d been waiting for three days, ever since the doctor confirmed it with wide eyes and more tests.
Quadruplets. Four children. A medical miracle.
