Chapter 14 - THE LAST THING LUCAS ASKED HER TO SIGN
Lucas requested mediation.
Emma agreed because litigation was draining money Sterling Pines needed.
They met in a neutral Hartford office.
Lucas looked nothing like the groom on the marble floor.
No tuxedo.
No confidence.
Just a gray suit and months of exhaustion.
He did not apologize first.
He offered terms.
He would relinquish his thirty-percent Sterling Pines interest.
Emma would release certain business claims.
The divorce would divide remaining marital assets by negotiated agreement.
Each side would handle personal liabilities separately where legally appropriate.
Caroline reviewed the proposal.
Some terms were reasonable.
Others were not.
Then Lucas placed one additional paper on the table.
Confidentiality.
Emma almost smiled.
Of course.
The last thing Lucas wanted her to sign was another document controlling the story.
“What does this cover?” she asked.
“Private marital matters.”
“Define private.”
Lucas’s attorney answered.
The blizzard.
Vanessa.
The company transfers.
The wedding incident.
Emma looked at Lucas.
“You still think the problem is people knowing.”
He stared at her.
“My life has been destroyed.”
“No.”
She spoke calmly.
“Your plans failed.”
His jaw tightened.
“You think there’s a difference?”
“Yes.”
Emma leaned forward.
“You have Grace.”
Lucas’s face changed.
Temporary family-court orders currently limited his contact with the baby to supervised sessions because of the domestic incident and ongoing conflict.
He had attended every one.
That complicated Emma’s anger.
Lucas was not indifferent to his daughter.
He was simply a man who had once treated Grace’s safety as secondary to control.
Whether that could change remained uncertain.
“You almost lost the right to know her,” Emma said.
Lucas looked down.
For the first time he spoke without strategy.
“I know.”
Emma waited.
“I didn’t think you’d really walk to the Ellisons’ house.”
There it was.
The terrible scale of his thinking.
He knew he had locked her outside.
He assumed survival because Emma always survived.
“You put that on me too,” she said.
“What?”
“The responsibility to make your cruelty nonfatal.”
Lucas closed his eyes.
No defense came.
Emma declined the broad confidentiality agreement.
She agreed to ordinary privacy protections for Grace and certain financial information.
Nothing that required her to lie about what happened.
Lucas signed the ownership relinquishment provision subject to final settlement terms.
Not because Emma pinned him to a wedding floor.
Because his thirty-percent interest had lost much of its value, his legal expenses were growing, and continued fighting carried greater risk.
Real consequences.
Ugly arithmetic.
Before they left, Lucas asked:
“Did Vanessa know you were coming to the wedding?”
Emma looked at him.
“Ask Vanessa.”
He gave a bitter smile.
“She won’t speak to me.”
Emma gathered her papers.
May you like
For years Lucas had relied on women to carry information between his different lives.
That service was over.
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