Papers rustled.
Someone coughed in the back row.
A clerk shifted in her chair.
But beneath all of that there was a slow, heavy tension, like the pause before a storm breaks.
Across the aisle sat my former husband, Daniel Carter.
He looked exactly the way he always looked when he wanted people to believe he was reasonable.
Tailored charcoal suit. Crisp white shirt. Hair carefully parted like he’d just stepped out of a magazine advertisement for responsible fathers.
His posture was relaxed but alert, his hands folded neatly on the table, his face calm in that deliberate way that meant he was performing calm rather than feeling it.
And next to him stood the man he had hired to dismantle my life.
Daniel’s lawyer, Victor Langford, had the confident smile of someone who had never once doubted the power of a well-organized spreadsheet.
