Divorce Papers & Ultrasound

The morning after, I wake up in Alexander Kane’s guest wing at 6:14 a.m. The bed is arctic-white, ten-thousand-thread-count, and feels like a crime scene because I actually slept.

There’s a single white rose on the pillow beside me. No note. Just the flower, dewy and perfect, like it grew there overnight.

I’m still staring at it when my phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Unknown number. San Francisco prefix.

I answer.

“Mrs. Whitford?” A nervous male voice, Theo’s lawyer. “Mr. Whitford would like to finalise the divorce today. He’s at the penthouse if you’re available to sign.”

I hang up without replying and text Alexander one word: Now.

He’s in the kitchen thirty seconds later, hair wet from his own shower, black T-shirt clinging to places I refuse to catalogue. He reads my face and doesn’t ask questions.

“Want me to come up?”

“No. I want you to wait in the car. If I’m not down in twenty minutes, come get me.”

He nods once. “Take the obsidian letter-opener. Just in case.”

I almost smile.

Twenty-three minutes later I’m walking back into the penthouse I haven’t slept in for thirty-six hours. The air is thick with burnt coffee and desperation.

Theo is at the island in the same clothes he wore yesterday. Eyes bloodshot, hands shaking around a mug. Amara is nowhere, probably still asleep… in my bed.

He startles when he sees me.

“Livia…”

I drop my clutch on the counter and pull out the revised divorce packet Alexander’s team rewrote overnight.

“New terms,” I say, voice flat. “Sign, or I let the world know exactly how infertile you are and how many lies you sold to get here.”

He flinches like I slapped him.

I slide the papers across the marble with one finger. A black Montblanc rolls beside them like a bullet.

He stares at the cover page. “How did you get married again in less than twenty-four hours?”

“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Theo.”

His laugh is broken glass. “I didn’t think you’d…”

“You didn’t think. Period.”

He opens the packet with shaking fingers. Page after page of clauses designed to skin him alive financially and emotionally. When he reaches the parental-rights section, his breath hitches.

I reach into my clutch and pull out the ultrasound photo (the original, still edged with dried blood from the night everything shattered).

I set it on top of the papers, right under his nose.

Theo stares at it like it’s radioactive.

Eight weeks. Tiny bean. Heartbeat flickering like a star.

My future.

His future that will never be his.

“That’s yours,” I say quietly. “Or it was. Now it’s mine. Biologically yours. Legally, socially, emotionally… not even a bit. Sign the termination clause and you never have to wonder again.”

The colour drains from his face so fast I’m surprised he doesn’t pass out.

He makes a sound like a wounded animal.

I wait.

He signs every page. Hands trembling so badly the ink bleeds in places.

When he’s done he tries to hand me the pen back like an offering.

I don’t take it.

Instead I pick up the ultrasound, fold it once, and slide it into my clutch.

“Congratulations,” I say quietly. “You’re free. Try not to choke on it.”

I turn to leave.

At the elevator I pause.

“Oh, and Theo?” He looks up, eyes swollen, desperate.

“The next time you or your lawyers call me Mrs. Whitford, I’ll have Alexander buy your childhood home and burn it down with you in it.”

The doors close on his face.

Downstairs, Alexander is leaning against the Maybach in the morning sun.

He straightens when he sees me.

He doesn’t ask how it went.

I walk straight past him and open the passenger door myself.

Only when we’re moving does he speak.

“Everything you wanted?”

“Everything and more.”

He nods, eyes on the road.

Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “I put the white rose on your pillow this morning.”

I look at him.

He keeps his gaze forward, jaw tight.

“I know,” I say.

I lean my head against the cool window and watch the city blur past.

For the first time in seventy-two hours, I don’t feel like I’m bleeding.

I feel like I just cauterised the wound myself.

Neither of us says another word the entire drive.