Chapter 4 — "Sign Here"

Emma’s pov

I tried to grab the water by the table, but my hands couldn’t stretch up to the length. Michael reached out for it, and shoved it towards me.

“I don’t need your help, Michael!” I spat. “Not until you tell me that all of these is a lie!”

“We have a timeline to keep, Emma,” Zara said. She stood near the foot of the bed, perfectly composed, while Michael hovered a step behind her like a shadow. “The sooner this is settled, the better it is for everyone.”

“A timeline,” I repeated, a bitter laugh cutting through my raw throat. “A year of marriage behind my back. Three months of a pregnancy you hid while pretending to be my friend. What was the timeline, Zara? When were you going to tell me? Or were you just waiting for me to die on those stairs?”

Zara tilted her head, her expression terrifyingly clinical. “The stairs was your doing. We had nothing to do with that. Honestly, the plan was much cleaner before any of this.” She stepped closer. “Michael needed the Whitfield assets to solidify his standing. He’s only an illegitimate son, Emma. Old man Stanford has a legitimate heir. Daniel gets everything by default unless Michael could bring a massive portfolio to the table to prove his worth to the board.”

I looked at Michael. He was staring at the wall just above my head, his hands shoved deep into his suit pockets.

“So I was just a business transaction? A strategic move?”

“It was my idea, actually,” Zara said, her voice dripping with a casual, sickening pride. “Michael and I have been in love since before he met you. But love doesn’t pay for the Stanford lifestyle, and it certainly doesn’t win corporate wars. I told him it would be better to set my man up with my wealthiest friend if it meant we’d get everything we wanted in the end. And look at that. It worked perfectly.”

The coldness of her words felt like a blow. The woman who had cried with me over failed pregnancy tests had engineered my entire marriage as a corporate hostile takeover.

Zara stepped forward, placing a stack of documents onto the rolling tray table, right over the puddle of spilled water. The edges of the paper instantly began to soak up the moisture, turning a dark, translucent gray.

“These are the dissolution papers, Mrs. Stanford,” Zara said. “A full waiver of claims. You sign over your rights to the joint marital property, and in exchange, the Stanford Group will cover all your current medical expenses and provide a single lump-sum severance.”

‘Severance.’ Like I was being fired from a job.

I looked down at the documents. My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild, panicked rhythm. I hadn't decided if I could ever forgive Michael for what I saw on that couch. The betrayal was a gaping, bleeding wound. But looking at the papers, reality crashed down on me. I didn't want this. I didn't want the four years of my life, the thousands of shared mornings, the promises whispered in the dark, to end on a wet piece of paper in a hospital room.

Micheal and I had a very loving, perfect marriage or so I thought.

I looked past Zara. I fixed my eyes entirely on my husband.

“Michael,” I whispered, my voice trembling, stripped of all anger, leaving only raw, desperate vulnerability. “Michael, please. Look at me. Don't do this. Don't end our marriage like this. We can... we can talk about this. Away from her. Please.”

Michael’s shoulders stiffened, he broke his gaze from the wall and looked down at me.

“Emma, just... just sign the papers,” Michael said, his voice thin, lacking any of the corporate authority Zara carried. He shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. “It’s already over, and you have heard everything she has said.”

A sick wave of realization washed over me. He wasn't just a monster. He was a coward. He was hiding behind his mother, behind Zara, unable to even own the destruction he had caused.

“Easier,” I breathed.

“Sign, Emma,” Zara prompted, tapping a gold pen against the tray table. “Stop being pathetic and shamelessly weak!”

I reached out my hand. My fingers were shaking so violently I could barely grasp the pen Zara offered. The metal felt ice-cold against my skin.

I dragged the rolling table closer to the bed. The top page of the document read ‘MARITAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT’. I flipped through the pages, the text blurring into a sea of legal jargon, until I found the final sheet. There was a small, neat black line under the word

‘Respondent’.

I pressed the tip of the pen to the paper. A small dot of black ink bled into the page.

My hand trembled, the tip of the pen scratching against the fiber of the paper as I began to write. E-m-m-a. Each letter looked deformed, completely unlike my actual handwriting. It looked like the signature of a stranger. I watched the ink flow from the ballpoint, realizing that with every stroke of the pen, I was officially erasing the last four years of my life. I was signing away the man I loved, the friend I trusted, and the life I thought I was building.

I finished the last stroke of the d in Stanford.

I let the pen drop from my fingers. It rolled across the contract and splashed into the puddle of water, coming to a stop against the metal rim of the tray.

“Excellent,” Zara murmured with a victorious smile, efficiently sliding the signed page out from under my hands and tucking it away. “Let’s go, babe.”