Chapter 4: Lawyered Up

GRACE'S POV

I left Stella's apartment with more questions than answers and a sick feeling in my stomach that had nothing to do with the lack of sleep. A bet. Marcus had mentioned a bet and Carter had shut him down fast, which meant it was something bad. Something worse than the cheating, worse than the videos, worse than anything I'd uncovered so far. I sat in my car for twenty minutes trying to decide what to do next, then pulled out my phone and called the only person I trusted completely.

Naomi picked up on the fourth ring, voice thick with sleep. "Someone better be dead or on fire."

"It's Grace."

"Grace?" I heard rustling, the sound of her sitting up. "What's wrong? What time is it?"

"I don't know. Early. Late. Does it matter?" My voice cracked and I hated it, hated how weak I sounded. "I need a lawyer. I need you."

"Okay." She was awake now, alert. "Tell me what happened."

So I did. All of it. The videos, the confrontation with Carter, the visit to Stella's apartment. The mention of a bet that no one would explain. Naomi didn't interrupt once, just let me talk until I ran out of words and sat there in my car outside Stella's building, shaking.

"That motherfucker," Naomi said finally, and her voice was so cold it made me feel better somehow. Like my anger was justified, like I wasn't crazy for wanting to burn Carter's entire world down. "That absolute piece of shit. I'm going to destroy him, Grace. I'm going to take everything he has and then I'm going to take things he doesn't even know he has yet."

"The prenup—"

"Fuck the prenup. We'll find a way around it. Fraud, duress, material misrepresentation. He lied to you about the fundamental nature of your marriage. That's grounds for invalidation in New York." I heard her moving around, probably getting dressed. "Where are you right now?"

"Outside Stella's place. I should go home but I can't—I can't be in that apartment, Naomi. Everything there is his. The furniture, the art, even the dishes. He picked all of it and I just went along because I thought that's what you did when you were married. You compromised. You blended lives."

"Where do you want to be?"

The question caught me off guard. I'd spent three years asking Carter what he wanted, where he wanted to go, what would make him happy. No one had asked me what I wanted in so long I'd forgotten how to answer. "I don't know."

"Then come to my place. We'll order breakfast and start making a plan. Can you drive or do you need me to come get you?"

"I can drive." I started the car, hands steadier now that I had a destination. "Naomi, there's something else. Something about a bet. Stella heard Marcus mention it but she doesn't know details. Whatever it is, Carter really didn't want anyone to know about it."

"A bet." I could hear her thinking, processing. "Between Carter and his boys' club friends. About what?"

"I don't know. But it scared Stella when I asked about it. She said they have lawyers, that they make people sign agreements. She thought it was just privacy stuff but—"

"But men like that don't hide things unless they're really bad." Naomi's voice went sharp. "Okay. First priority is getting you somewhere safe. Second is documenting everything you found—emails, videos, text messages, all of it. Third is figuring out what this bet is and whether we can use it."

"Use it how?"

"To make him bleed." She said it matter-of-factly, like she was discussing the weather. "He thought he could trap you with a prenup, make you dependent on him, and then do whatever he wanted. We're going to show him what happens when you underestimate your opponent."

I drove to Naomi's apartment in Brooklyn on autopilot, my brain cataloging every intersection and turn without really seeing any of it. The sun was fully up by the time I parked outside her brownstone, and I looked at my phone to see I'd been driving for almost an hour. No messages from Carter. No missed calls. He really thought I'd just calm down and accept this, that I'd go back to being his perfect accessory once I'd had time to think about what I'd be giving up.

Naomi was waiting at her door in sweatpants and a Howard Law hoodie, her natural hair piled on top of her head in a silk scarf. She took one look at my face and pulled me into a hug that lasted long enough for me to start crying again. "I've got you," she murmured into my hair. "We've got this. He doesn't get to win."

Her apartment was everything mine wasn't—warm and cluttered and full of her personality. Books stacked on every surface, plants in mismatched pots, a gallery wall of photos from law school and family gatherings. A space that felt lived in instead of staged. She settled me on her couch with a blanket and disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with coffee and a notepad.

"Okay." She sat cross-legged on the coffee table in front of me, pen poised. "We're going to go through everything methodically. Every piece of evidence you have, every conversation, every detail. Then we're going to figure out our strategy."

We worked for three hours straight. I showed her the forwarded emails, the videos I'd saved to my cloud drive, the screenshots of text messages. She took notes in her precise handwriting, occasionally asking questions about dates or context. When we got to the part about the bet, she circled it three times and underlined it.

"This is the key," she said. "Whatever this bet is, it's what he's really afraid of. Everything else—the cheating, the videos—that's embarrassing but survivable for a man like Carter. Rich guys cheat all the time and their reputations recover. But if there's some kind of formal agreement, some documented proof that he married you under false pretenses, that changes everything."

"How do we find out what it is?"

"We could try to access his office safe. That's where he'd keep physical documents he didn't want digitized." She tapped her pen against the notepad. "Or we could ask Marcus directly. He's the weak link. I've met him a few times at your parties and he's arrogant but not as smart as he thinks he is. If we push the right buttons, he might slip up."

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: "Ms. Monroe-Vaughn, this is David Chen from Sterling & Associates. I represent your husband Carter Vaughn. Please confirm receipt of this message."

I showed it to Naomi. Her jaw tightened. "He's really doing this. He's lawyering up already."

"What do I say?"

"Nothing yet." She grabbed her own phone. "Let me call my office, get someone to cover my morning appointments. Then we're going to respond through me as your attorney of record. He wants to play this game, we'll play."

Another text came through, this time from Carter himself: "My lawyer will be in touch. Don't do anything stupid, Grace. The prenup is ironclad and you'll only embarrass yourself if you try to fight it."

I stared at the message, at the casual cruelty of it. Don't do anything stupid. Like I was the problem here. Like I was the one who'd blown up our marriage. "He thinks I'm going to just accept this."

"He thinks you're the same woman he married. Quiet and accommodating and desperate for his approval." Naomi looked up from her phone. "Show him he's wrong."

I typed back: "My lawyer will be in touch with yours. Don't contact me directly again."

His response was immediate: "Your lawyer? Grace, be reasonable. You can't afford to fight me."

"Watch me," I sent back, then blocked his number.

Naomi grinned. "That's my girl. Now let's get you set up with a bank account in your name only, transfer whatever money you have access to, and start building your case."

We spent the rest of the morning handling logistics. Naomi walked me through everything I needed to do—separate my finances, document all shared assets, gather proof of Carter's infidelity for the court. She made phone calls to other lawyers she knew, asking questions about prenup challenges and fraud claims. I sat there drinking coffee and feeling simultaneously powerful and terrified. This was real. I was really leaving him.

Around noon, someone knocked on Naomi's door. She looked through the peephole and swore under her breath. "It's a process server."

"Already?" My stomach dropped. "He works fast."

"He's scared." She opened the door, accepted the manila envelope, and signed for it. The server left without a word and Naomi brought the envelope to the couch, opened it carefully. Her face went hard as she read. "Okay. This is worse than I thought."

"What is it?"

"Divorce papers. Filed this morning." She kept reading, flipping pages. "He's citing irreconcilable differences, asking for immediate separation of assets per the prenuptial agreement. There's a proposed settlement here—he's offering you ten million dollars."

"Ten million?" I took the papers from her, scanned them. The numbers swam in front of my eyes. "That's more than the prenup stipulated. Why would he—"

"Look at the conditions." Naomi pointed to a paragraph halfway down. "The ten million is contingent on you signing a comprehensive non-disclosure agreement. You can't discuss your marriage publicly, can't make any statements about Carter to press or media, can't disclose any information about his personal or professional life. If you violate it, you forfeit the entire sum plus penalties."

I read the paragraph three times, trying to process it. "He's buying my silence."

"For ten million dollars. Which is a lot of money, Grace, but it's also a fraction of what he's worth. He'd only do this if he thought you had something really damaging. Something worth way more than ten million to keep quiet." She grabbed her notepad, started writing. "This confirms it. The bet or whatever it is—it's bad enough that he's willing to pay serious money to make sure it never comes out."

"So what do we do?"

"We don't sign. Not yet." Naomi's eyes were bright with strategy. "We tell his lawyer we're reviewing the offer with counsel and we need more time. Meanwhile, we keep digging. We find out what this bet is and then we use it as leverage."

"Leverage for what? I don't want his money, Naomi. I want—" I stopped, not sure what I wanted. Justice felt too abstract. Revenge felt too petty. "I want him to hurt the way I'm hurting. I want everyone to know what he did."

"Then we go public. We take everything we have and we tell your story. But Grace, you need to understand what that means. The prenup probably has penalties for disparagement. If you speak out, you might lose everything. No settlement, no money, nothing but the satisfaction of watching his reputation burn."

"Would it burn though? You said rich men survive scandals all the time."

"They do. But there's surviving and there's thriving. If we do this right, if we can prove he married you under fraudulent circumstances, if we can connect this bet to other men in his circle, we might be able to take down more than just Carter. We could expose an entire culture." She leaned forward, intense. "But it has to be strategic. We need evidence, documentation, multiple sources. We need to make it impossible for them to dismiss you as a bitter ex-wife."

My phone buzzed again. Different unknown number this time. The message made my blood run cold: "This is David Chen. I strongly advise you to review the settlement offer carefully. My client is being generous. If you choose to reject it and pursue litigation, he will defend himself vigorously. The prenuptial agreement is legally binding and you will likely receive nothing through the courts. The ten million dollar offer expires in 48 hours."

I showed Naomi. She snorted. "Forty-eight hours. He really is panicking. That's not how these things work unless you're desperate to close fast."

"What do I do?"

"You wait. Let him sweat." She grabbed her laptop, started typing. "I'm going to draft a response that basically says we acknowledge receipt and are considering our options. Meanwhile, you're going to think very carefully about what you want the end result to be here. Because once we commit to a path, there's no going back."

I looked at the divorce papers spread across Naomi's coffee table. Three years of my life reduced to legal language and financial settlements. Ten million dollars to forget everything I knew, to pretend my marriage had been normal instead of a performance, to let Carter and his friends continue treating women like possessions to be traded and shared.

"I want them to pay," I said quietly. "All of them. Not just Carter. Every man who knew what he was doing and said nothing. Every man who participated. I want them exposed."

Naomi smiled, sharp and satisfied. "Then let's go to war."

She drafted the response and sent it off, then ordered us lunch from the Thai place down the street. We ate pad thai straight from the containers while planning our next moves. Naomi had contacts at several media outlets, journalists who specialized in exposing powerful men. But we needed more than just my word. We needed documents, recordings, other victims willing to come forward.

"What about Stella?" Naomi asked. "Would she testify?"

"I don't know. She's scared of them. And she still thinks she's in love with Carter." The pad thai turned to ash in my mouth. "But maybe I could convince her. If she understood what he really thought of her, what they all thought of her."

"Or we find the other women. You said there were six in the videos you saw. That's six potential witnesses." Naomi pulled up a legal pad, started making a list. "We need names, contact information. We need to figure out if any of them knew they were being recorded. That's a crime in New York if they didn't consent."

"Carter wouldn't care about that. Laws are for other people." I pushed away the food, suddenly nauseous. "Naomi, what if we do all this and nothing changes? What if he's right and the prenup is bulletproof and I walk away with nothing?"

"Then you still walk away with your dignity. With your truth. With the knowledge that you didn't let him silence you." She reached across the table, grabbed my hand. "But honestly? I think we're going to take him for everything he's got. I think we're going to find this bet and whatever documentation exists and we're going to prove that your marriage was a fraud from day one. And when we do, that prenup won't be worth the paper it's printed on."

"You really think so?"

"I know so. Because here's what Carter doesn't understand about you, what he never bothered to learn in three years of marriage." She squeezed my hand. "You're not the woman he married anymore. You're not the model who needed his validation or the wife who made herself small to fit into his life. You're Grace fucking Monroe, and you're about to remind him why that's a problem for him."

I looked at my best friend and felt something shift inside me. The fear was still there, the grief and the anger and the bone-deep exhaustion. But underneath it all was something new. Something hard and bright and absolutely certain.

I was done being Carter Vaughn's trophy. It was time to be his reckoning.