Chapter 3 - The Collapse of an Empire
The silence following the judge’s final gavel strike was deafening.
Scott remained frozen at the defense table, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his eyes wide and bloodshot. He looked like a man who had stepped off a cliff expecting to fly, only to realize there was no ground beneath him.
"Avery..." Scott’s voice was a cracked, terrified whisper. He stepped away from his attorney and took a faltering step toward my table. "Avery, wait. Please. This... this is a massive misunderstanding. You know my grandmother was old, she was confused when she wrote that will!"
Jerome immediately stepped between us, his massive frame blocking Scott completely. "Do not step any closer to my client, Mr. Collins. You are under a strict court-ordered restraining order. Any direct contact from you or your representative will result in your immediate arrest."
"Avery, look at me!" Scott yelled over Jerome's shoulder, panic bleeding out of every pore. "We've been together for nine years! You love me! We built a life together! You can't just take everything my family owned! What am I supposed to do?!"
I stood up slowly, picking up my leather handbag. I walked around Jerome until I was standing right in front of Scott. I looked at him—really looked at him. The handsome, charming college sweetheart I had married was gone. In his place stood a selfish, cowardly stranger who would have thrown me onto the street without a dime just to satisfy his own vanity.
"You told me I had two hours to pack my life into a box, Scott," I said, my voice ice-cold and utterly steady. "You told me the house was yours, the money was yours, and that I was nothing. Now, you have twenty-four hours to clear your things out of my house."
"Your house?!" Scott choked.
"The marital residence was purchased during our engagement with a down payment provided by your grandmother's trust," Jerome chimed in with a calm grin. "Since the trust assets now belong entirely to Avery, and since you used joint marital accounts to pay the mortgage, the property title is being transferred directly to Mrs. Collins. You are officially an illegal occupant."
Scott gasped, grabbing his chest as if he couldn't breathe. "No... no, no, no! My Porsche! My investments! I took out three hundred thousand dollars in hard-money loans using the trust as collateral to buy the car and Kayla’s ring! The lenders will ruin me!"
"That sounds like a personal financial crisis, Mr. Collins," I smiled, echoing the exact cold tone he had used on me over the phone two weeks prior. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
I turned on my heel and walked out of the courtroom, the rhythmic click of my high heels sounding like victory. Rachel was waiting in the lobby, throwing her arms around me in a tight, screaming hug, while the hallway echoed with Scott’s desperate shouts behind us.
When we stepped out onto the courthouse steps, Kayla was standing by the curb, sobbing uncontrollably into her phone. Her designer mascara was running down her cheeks in dark, messy streaks. The moment she saw Scott stumble out of the courthouse doors, flanked by his utterly exhausted lawyer, she rushed over to him.
"Scott! What happened?!" she wailed, grabbing his designer suit jacket. "Where is the money?! What did the judge say about the seven millions?!"
Scott violently shoved her hand off his arm. His face was twisted in rage and absolute despair. "GET AWAY FROM ME, KAYLA!" he screamed at her, his voice cracking across the courtyard. "This is your fault! If you hadn't pushed me to kick her out! If you hadn't demanded that stupid six-carat ring and the new house renovations, I would have waited eleven more months! I would have had the money!"
"MY FAULT?!" Kayla shrieked back, her shock instantly turning into fury. "You lied to me! You told me you were a multimillionaire! You told me you owned that house! You made me quit my job at the agency because you said I was going to be a lady of leisure!"
"I don't have a dime, Kayla!" Scott roared, pulling at his own hair like a madman. "The judge froze my bank accounts! The hard-money lenders are going to repossess the Porsche by tomorrow morning! I have nothing!"
"You useless, pathetic fraud!" Kayla screamed, pulling the massive diamond ring off her finger and throwing it directly at his face. The ring bounced off his chest and rolled into a nearby storm drain, disappearing into the dark sewer water below. "I’m not staying around to go bankrupt with you!"
She turned around, flaggged down a passing taxi, slammed the door, and sped away, leaving Scott standing alone on the sidewalk in the drizzling rain.
Jerome, Rachel, and I stood near our car, watching the entire spectacle unfold.
"Well," Rachel said, popping a piece of gum into her mouth with absolute satisfaction. "That was better than any reality TV show I’ve ever watched."
"It’s only the beginning," Jerome noted, opening the car door for me. "The financial audit of Scott’s accounts starts tomorrow. Every dollar of marital money he spent on her—hotels, trips, jewelry—will have to be reimbursed to Avery from his remaining personal assets or future earnings. He will be paying for this divorce for the next twenty years."
I sat in the back of the sleek sedan, looking out the window as Scott fell to his knees on the wet pavement, burying his face in his hands, completely broken.
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Two months ago, I would have felt a surge of pity. I would have wanted to reach out, to comfort him, to fix his problems as I had done throughout our entire marriage. But as the car pulled away from the curb, leaving him behind in the rear-view mirror, I felt nothing but a profound, glorious sense of freedom.
I wasn't just surviving the storm Scott had created. I had become the storm. And my new life was just beginning.
