Chapter 5 - The Legal Battlefield
The next three months were a masterclass in corporate and domestic litigation.
Jason tried to fight the divorce tooth and nail, hiring a flashy, high-priced divorce attorney named Marcus Vance—no relation to my lawyer—who promised him a massive settlement, alimony, and half of my corporate assets. But Marcus hadn't counted on the digital paper trail I had meticulously gathered over the past six months.
On a rainy Tuesday morning in May, Julian Vance and I sat in a sleek conference room at the downtown courthouse for our preliminary financial deposition.
Jason walked in looking haggard, wearing a slightly rumpled suit that showed he was struggling to keep up appearances now that he was paying for a studio apartment entirely on his own meager sales salary. His attorney sat beside him, looking confident with a thick leather briefcase.
"Good morning, Mr. Miller," Julian greeted him smoothly, sliding a massive, tabbed binder across the polished mahogany table. "Before we begin discussions regarding asset division, I’d like to introduce Exhibit A through H."
Jason’s attorney flipped open the binder, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline as he scanned the first page. "What is this?"
"That," Julian said with a chillingly polite smile, "is a comprehensive forensic accounting report detailing over one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in unauthorized cash transfers, hidden personal debts, and luxury purchases made by Mr. Miller over the past four years—funded entirely by my client’s personal salary and pre-marital accounts. Furthermore, attached to Tab D, you will find bank surveillance stills and IP login logs proving that Mr. Miller illegally copied my client’s private credit card information with the explicit intent of funding an unauthorized international trip."
Jason’s face went completely grey. He turned his head frantically toward his lawyer. "That's... that's not true! She's lying!"
"It's entirely true, Jason," I said, speaking for the first time, leaning forward and resting my arms on the table. "I have the text messages where you admitted to browsing my banking portal. I have the bank's fraud report. And I have your mother’s explicit demands recorded in voicemail logs."
Jason’s attorney quietly closed the binder, looked at his client with a mixture of disgust and professional pity, and turned to Julian. "We would like a fifteen-minute recess to confer with our client."
"Granted," Julian replied.
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When they returned twenty minutes later, the fight had entirely gone out of them. Jason sat slumped in his chair, staring at his hands, realizing that his attempt to financially exploit me had completely blown up in his face.
The final settlement was signed before the sun went down that afternoon: Jason walked away with his personal belongings, his car lease (which he now had to pay for himself), zero alimony, zero share of my pre-marital estate, and a strict custody agreement that granted him alternate weekends with Leo and Maya—provided he could prove he had a stable, drug-free living environment.
