Julian Carter

I printed out three documents. The first was a petition for divorce. The second revoked my husband, Graham Whitaker’s, medical power of attorney. The third prohibited him from using any of our remaining frozen embryos. An hour ago, at a charity gala being livestreamed across the internet, my husband of six years—the man I had married in secret—declared that his first love was “the woman who taught me what home means.” Then he placed the Whitaker family ring on her son’s hand. On TikTok, everyone was praising him as Stepdad of the Year, waiting for him to give his first love the grand wedding she deserved. And I had just lost our baby, alone on an operating table. Late that night, Graham finally came home. He saw me watching the video of him putting the ring on that child and snatched the iPad from my hands. His brow furrowed, his voice sharp with impatience. “It’s PR, Nora. Why are you getting so worked up?” I looked up at him and smiled. He had no idea I’d channeled all that agitation into three notarized documents. Soon enough, his lawyer would tell him just how “worked up” I was. ... The moment he finished speaking, I turned and walked toward the study. I could feel his gaze on my back, laced with the irritation of a man who’d been defied. I stopped in front of the safe and looked back at him. “Where’s the ring?” I meant the Whitaker family signet ring, the one that had been passed down for a century. He had inherited it from his father and given it to me to keep. Tonight, that same ring had been on another woman’s son’s hand. Graham’s gaze flickered away, instinctively avoiding mine. “The foundation needed footage for the annual report. Something about family legacy. I just… lent it to Elise for a while.” The explanation was so clumsy it was almost funny. If this had been the old me, I would have pressed him until I got the truth. I would have demanded to know why the legal wife was absent from......