“You called me every Sunday.”

“That was habit.”

“You told me you loved me.”

“I didn’t want drama while I was trying to work.”

Vanessa looked uncomfortable.

“Daniel told me you were basically divorced.”

I turned toward her.

“Basically?”

Daniel’s face hardened.

“Don’t turn this into something ugly.”

That sentence did something strange to me.

My anger disappeared.

I walked to a nearby trash can and placed the white lilies on top.

Then I pulled off my wedding ring.

Daniel watched me.

When I dropped it into his palm, relief crossed his face.

He thought I was giving up.

“Okay.”

He blinked.

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“That’s all.”

I turned toward the parking garage.

“Emily.”

I stopped.

His voice had changed.

Almost suspicious.

“We should talk about the house tomorrow.”

I glanced back.

“What about the house?”

“I’m entitled to my share. Vanessa and the boys are going to need somewhere stable while we transition.”

For the first time since seeing him, I smiled.

Daniel noticed immediately.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Then I walked away.

He thought the house was the most important asset connected to me.

He was wrong.

And he had no idea that for the previous eighteen months, I had quietly controlled the company keeping his precious research alive.

Daniel arrived at my house the next morning.

Vanessa was with him.

So were two suitcases.

I stared at them from the doorway.

“You actually brought her here?”

Vanessa folded her arms.

“Daniel said half the property belongs to him.”

Daniel walked inside without waiting for an invitation.

“I want us to handle this like adults.”

I shut the door behind him.

“Like adults?”

“We both benefited from my career, Emily.”

That nearly made me laugh.

Daniel had always been an excellent scientist.

Brilliant, ambitious, disciplined in the laboratory.

Financially?

A disaster.

I was a biomedical patent attorney.

And while Daniel spent years chasing prestige in academic medicine, I had quietly built something of my own.

A medical technology investment company.

Northstar Biomedical.

Daniel knew the name.

Practically everyone in his field did.

What Daniel did not know was that I owned seventy-two percent of the company.

My role had never been heavily publicized because much of my legal practice involved companies operating in the same sector.

My managing partner, Marcus Lee, represented Northstar publicly.

Eighteen months earlier, Northstar had invested $4.8 million into a gene-therapy program at Daniel’s research institute.