The cold tile beneath me offered a grounding, relentless reality: my five-year nightmare was officially coming to an end.

Three days after the eviction, the fallout from Fiona’s ruined birthday feast was consuming Chicago’s high-society gossip channels.

The story had leaked to the Chicago Sun-Times—courtesy of Evelyn Croft herself—detailing how the arrogant Fiona Vance and her abusive son were thrown out of a $3.5 million Gold Coast penthouse by the very woman they tried to enslave.

I sat in Darcy’s high-rise law office on La Salle Street, watching the rain streak down the windows.

"Julian’s attorney called me three times this morning," Darcy said, walking in with two hot coffees and sliding one across the desk to me. "He’s desperate."

"What does he want?" I asked, taking a sip.

"A settlement," Darcy scoffed, sitting down in her leather chair. "Julian is living out of a cheap airport motel near O'Hare. His credit cards are frozen, his luxury Audi was repossessed yesterday because the lease was under your corporate account, and he has less than twelve hundred dollars in his personal checking account."

I chuckled coldly. "And Fiona?"

"Fiona tried to check into the Drake Hotel using her J&F Design Holdings debit card," Darcy grinned. "The transaction was declined at the front desk in front of a dozen people. She’s currently staying on her sister’s couch in Indiana, weeping to anyone who will listen about her 'cruel, ungrateful daughter-in-law.'"

"They haven't seen anything yet," I said, setting my cup down. "What about the IRS audit?"

Darcy tapped her keyboard, pulling up a red-stamped federal document. "The IRS Criminal Investigation Division accepted our paper trail. They opened a formal investigation into Julian and Fiona yesterday for off-shoring over $800,000 in unregistered assets through J&F Design Holdings."

Right on cue, my private phone rang. The screen displayed an unlisted number.

I tapped speakerphone. "Hello?"

"Sloan! Sloan, please don't hang up!" Julian’s frantic, groveling voice burst through the speaker. He sounded entirely broken, his usual slick arrogance replaced by breathy panic. "Sloan, I’m begging you! Please talk to me!"

"You are violating the Order of Protection, Julian," I said calmly. "This call is being recorded."

"I don't care! I don't care about the order!" Julian cried out. "Sloan, my life is ruined! The IRS froze everything! My firm’s bank accounts are gone! I don't even have money to pay my lawyer! Please, Sloan, we were married for five years! How can you be so heartless?!"

"Heartless?" I repeated, my voice dropping into an icy register. "Julian, you dragged me into a cold kitchen by my hair. You locked a deadbolt and told me to cook sixty dishes or be thrown onto the street. You treated me like an unpaid servant while living off my hard-earned money."

"I was wrong!" Julian wept, openly crying through the phone. "I was an idiot! My mother pressured me, Sloan! It was Fiona! She’s the one who hated you! She’s the one who told me to be strict with you! I always loved you, Sloan!"

Darcy rolled her eyes so hard she nearly looked at the ceiling.

"Throwing your own mother under the bus to save your skin," I noted softly. "How typical of you, Julian."

"It’s the truth!" Julian pleaded. "If you drop the charges and lift the asset freeze, I’ll sign a full waiver! I won't ask for a single dollar in alimony! I’ll sign the divorce papers today! Just please... don't let them send me to prison!"

I leaned into the microphone, my words deliberate and sharp.

"You had five years to treat me like a human being, Julian. You chose to treat me like a slave. Now, you get to spend the next five to ten years explaining your tax fraud to a federal judge."