Chapter 4
The next seventy-two hours were a blur of lawyers and meetings and paperwork.
My mother’s legal team worked around the clock, going through every single document in those three thick binders, cross-referencing bank records, tracing wire transfers, building an airtight case against Ethan.
I spent most of my time in the penthouse, resting, eating the delicious food the housekeeper prepared, letting the reality sink in that I was safe now.
No more walking on eggshells around Ethan, waiting for him to explode over something stupid.
No more counting pennies to buy groceries while he bought Olivia thousand-dollar purses.
No more fear.
On the third day, Ethan called.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter while I was making myself a cup of tea.
I picked it up.
His name flashed on the screen.
I hesitated for half a second, then answered.
I wanted to hear what he had to say.
“Maya,” he said, his voice sounding breathless, panicked. “Thank God you picked up. Baby, listen to me—we need to talk. Your mother… she’s insane. She’s trying to ruin my life. All I want is for us to work this out, just the two of us, no lawyers, no drama. Okay?”
I almost laughed.
Just three days before, he’d been laughing at me in the courtroom, calling me greedy, telling me I deserved to be homeless.
Now he was “baby”-ing me.
“Work what out, Ethan?” I said, my voice calm. “The part where you stole every dollar I ever made? The part where you cheated on me for two years? The part where you stood in a court of law and lied under oath so I’d have nothing while our baby is about to be born? Which part of that did you want to work out?”
He was quiet for a second.
Then his tone changed.
The softness vanished.
The real Ethan came back.
“Listen to me, you ungrateful little bitch,” he hissed. “You think your mother’s money and her fancy lawyers are going to save you? You think you can take everything from me? I have friends. Powerful friends. I will drag this out for years. You will never see a dime. And when that baby is born? I will take it from you. I will tell the court you’re mentally unstable, that you’re living off some crazy woman who faked her own death, that you’re an unfit mother. I will get full custody. And you will never see that kid again. Do you understand me?”
My blood ran cold.
I gripped the phone so tight my knuckles turned white.
Before I could answer, I heard my mother’s voice behind me.
“Give me the phone, Maya.”
I turned.
She was standing in the kitchen doorway, her face like stone.
I handed her the phone.
She put it on speaker.
“Mr. Carter,” she said, her voice cold as ice. “This is Elena. I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to say, because I will only say it once. You will never get custody of that baby. You will never even be alone in the same room with that baby. In fact, if you so much as say the words ‘custody’ or ‘unfit mother’ again in any context whatsoever, I will release to every news outlet in this country the two hours of audio recordings my investigators made of you telling your little mistress exactly how you planned to frame Maya for a drug crime so you could take the baby and sell it to a childless couple you’d been talking to for ten thousand dollars.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
Dead silence.
Then Ethan made a small, strangled sound.
“You… you recorded that?” he whispered.
“I recorded everything,” my mother said. “Every lie. Every threat. Every criminal plan you ever spoke out loud. You want to go to war with me, Ethan? Fine. But you need to understand something. I have spent the last twenty years fighting men who make you look like a spoiled little toddler having a tantrum in a grocery store. Men who kill people for fun. Men who eat little boys like you for breakfast. And I won. Every single time. You are nothing to me. A gnat. A nuisance. I will squash you like the bug you are, and I won’t even break a sweat doing it. So here is what is going to happen. Tomorrow, in court, you will sign every single paper my lawyers put in front of you. You will not fight. You will not argue. You will not so much as roll your eyes. And if you do exactly what you’re told, I might consider not sending you to prison for the rest of your natural life. Do we have an understanding?”
Ethan didn’t answer.
I could hear him breathing hard on the other end, like he was hyperventilating.
“I said,” my mother repeated, her voice sharper, “do we have an understanding?”
“Yes,” Ethan whispered. “Yes. Okay. Whatever you want. Just… don’t send those recordings to anyone. Please.”
My mother hung up the phone without another word.
She turned to me, her face softening immediately when she saw how pale I was.
She crossed the kitchen and pulled me into a hug.
“He was really going to do that?” I said, my voice shaking. “Take my baby? Sell it?”
My mother held me tighter.
“He was never going to get close enough to try,” she said. “I would’ve killed him with my bare hands first. And he knows it now. He’s scared, Maya. Terrified. And that’s exactly where we want him. Scared men make mistakes. And tomorrow, he’s going to make the biggest mistake of his life. He’s going to sign everything away. And then it’ll all be over.”
I buried my face in her shoulder, my heart hammering.
She was right.
Ethan was scared.
He’d shown his true colors today.
All his big talk, all his threats—they were nothing but hot air.
The second someone stronger than him had stood up to him, he’d folded like a cheap suit.
The next morning, we went back to court.
Ethan was already there when we walked in.
He looked terrible.
His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a mess, his suit wrinkled like he’d slept in it.
Olivia wasn’t with him.
Good.
My mother’s lawyers walked straight over to him, slamming a thick stack of papers down in front of him.
They talked in low voices for five minutes.
I watched Ethan’s face get paler and paler with every word they said.
Finally, he picked up a pen.
His hand was shaking so bad he could barely hold it.
He signed.
Page after page after page.
When he was done, the lawyers brought the papers to the judge.
The judge looked them over, then looked up at Ethan.
“You are agreeing to all of this, Mr. Carter?” the judge said. “Full ownership of all marital assets to your wife. One hundred percent of all business holdings. Two million dollars in punitive damages. Full sole legal and physical custody of the unborn child, with no visitation rights for you whatsoever. And you are waiving your right to appeal any part of this ruling. Is that correct?”
Ethan nodded, not looking up from the table.
“Yes, Your Honor,” he mumbled.
The judge banged his gavel.
“So ordered,” he said.
It was done.
We walked out of the courtroom ten minutes later.
Ethan was still sitting at the table, his head in his hands, looking like his whole world had just ended.
Good.
It had.
Outside, the sun was shining.
My mother squeezed my hand.
“One more thing to take care of,” she said.
Before I could ask what she meant, two police officers walked past us into the courtroom.
They walked straight up to Ethan.
I couldn’t hear what they said, but I saw them pull out handcuffs.
Ethan looked up, his eyes wide with terror.
He started shouting, struggling, as they cuffed his hands behind his back and led him out.
“Fraud, perjury, and conspiracy to commit child trafficking,” my mother said casually, like she was commenting on the weather. “My lawyers handed all the evidence over to the district attorney last night. He’s not going to be bothering anyone for a very long time.”
I stared as they led Ethan past us, his face red and screaming, the officers holding him tight.
He didn’t even look at me.
He was too busy begging for his freedom.
And I felt nothing.
No anger.
No sadness.
No regret.
Just… nothing.
He was gone.
Out of my life.
Forever.
May you like
I took a deep breath of fresh air, leaning against my mother.
It was really over.
