Later, he called again. Impatient. “Leave the keys. And one more thing—Kayla’s pregnant. We’re getting married next month.”
Three days later, Relle practically dragged me into a lawyer’s office. “He doesn’t get to erase you.” She said it like a vow, like she was physically holding my spine upright until my own strength came back.
Jerome listened without interrupting. Then he asked quietly, “What was his grandmother’s name?”
He typed for several minutes, his expression slowly changing. His eyes narrowed the way people’s eyes do when a story stops being emotional and starts being illegal.
Finally, he looked up. “Avery… I need to see that will.”
Two weeks later, Jerome slid a document across his desk. A single section highlighted in yellow.
One sentence. One condition.
Everything fell into place.
Jerome tapped the paper. “Read.”
I stared at the words. At first they looked like ordinary legal language—dense, careful, clinical. Then the meaning hit, clean and brutal: Scott’s grandmother hadn’t left the money to him the way he claimed. She’d placed it in a trust—for me—triggered by one specific event.
And suddenly, the two-hour ultimatum made perfect sense.
Scott wasn’t confidently walking away.
He was racing the clock.
Because the will’s condition was simple: if Scott initiated divorce proceedings against Avery Carter within a set window after the reading of the will, the inheritance transferred to Avery—provided Avery signed without contest. His “pack your things” wasn’t dominance; it was panic. He needed me frightened, isolated, and fast.
Jerome explained it slowly, like he was talking someone down from a ledge: Scott’s grandmother had suspected an affair, suspected greed, suspected exactly what kind of man her grandson would become the moment money entered the room. So she built a trap inside a gift—one that protected her wealth from the person least responsible enough to hold it.
