Chapter 1 - THE NAME LISTED FIRST
“You brought them here to watch you lose.”
Barrett thrust one hand toward our nine-year-old twins as his attorney opened the black prenuptial binder. His voice carried across Courtroom Three of the Franklin County Courthouse, where two local reporters and half a dozen curious spectators had gathered to watch the famous CEO dispose of his invisible wife.
I tightened my hands on Wyatt’s and Emmett’s shoulders.
“They came to hear the truth.”
Judge Lawson looked over her glasses. “The children will leave once we address the immediate document dispute. Until then, Mr. O’Connell, you will speak to the court—not at your wife.”
Barrett leaned against the rail beside Paige Delancy, his public-relations director and the woman who had been living in our Upper Arlington house since I moved out. Paige wore red and held herself with the polished confidence of someone expecting photographers afterward.
Barrett’s three attorneys had spent the morning describing me as financially dependent, professionally inactive, and emotionally unequipped to preserve the boys’ lifestyle. The prenup, they argued, protected O’Connell Logistics as Barrett’s separate property. His income, home, reputation, and travel schedule supposedly made him the safer custodial parent.
Then my attorney, Marisol Kane, handed the judge a certified copy of the company’s original ownership ledger.
Paige glanced at Barrett.
He nodded too quickly.
“She never owned anything,” Paige said.
Judge Lawson pushed the prenup binder aside and rotated the ledger toward Barrett.
“Then why is Loretta’s name listed first?”
His fingers locked around the rail.
Paige moved several inches away from him.
Judge Lawson turned a second page. Wyatt leaned forward before I could stop him.
“I know that name,” he whispered.
The judge looked from the page to my sons.
May you like
The name Wyatt recognized belonged to my mother, Marian Greene—the woman Barrett had spent thirteen years erasing from the company’s history.
And according to the ledger, she had never surrendered her interest.
