"He claimed he was 'too exhausted' for six months, but a pill in his jacket exposed his affair with his brother's wife—until three ambulances arrived and a dark family secret exploded."

Still confined to his hospital bed, Julian received an official hand-delivered packet from Vance-Sterling Enterprises. When Marcus and I walked into Room 312, he looked like a man who had already been executed and was just waiting for the paperwork to clear.

"What is this?" Julian muttered, staring at the thick envelope resting on his blanket.

"Your formal termination notice," Marcus said, pulling up a chair and sitting down with clinical detachment. "Followed by a demand for immediate resignation from your board seat due to gross misconduct, conflict of interest, and misuse of corporate subsidiary accounts for personal affair maintenance."

Julian tried to sit up, his face flushing crimson with desperate fury. "You can't do this! I built this branch! I brought in the Henderson accounts! The board will never vote to oust me without a severance package!"

"The board already voted," I said quietly, stepping forward. "Unanimously. At 9:00 AM this morning. Every single executive who owed their position to my father's trust voted to strip you of your title, your company car, your stock options, and your health insurance."

He stared at me, his eyes wide, the mask of corporate confidence completely obliterated. "Em... please. Please don't do this. We can go to counseling. We can start over. I'll cut ties with Sienna, I'll apologize to Ethan, we can move away from here—"

"Julian, stop," I interrupted, my voice cutting through his frantic pleading like glass. "There is no 'we.' There hasn't been a 'we' for a very long time. You didn't just cheat on me. You treated my love, my loyalty, and my family's generosity as a stepping stone for your own pathetic ego."

I tossed a pen onto the bed next to the envelope.

"Sign the divorce decree. Surrender the keys to the Tribeca apartment and the Connecticut estate. If you sign voluntarily, my legal team will quietly classify your departure as a 'health-related resignation,' sparing you the public humiliation of a criminal embezzlement trial for the funds you funneled to Sienna."

Julian looked at the pen, then at the divorce papers, and finally up at me. The reality of his situation finally settled in. He was broke, jobless, disgraced, abandoned by his mother, and completely stripped of the illusion of power he had worn like a stolen crown.

With shaking, pathetic fingers, Julian picked up the pen and scribbled his signature across the bottom of the page. The ink smeared from his sweaty palm.