Chapter 30 - The Summons in the Mail
The formal summons arrived at our Tribeca home via private courier on a rainy Thursday afternoon. Marcus was at an urban planning symposium in Brooklyn, and little Sarah was at school, leaving the sprawling loft unusually quiet.
I broke the wax seal of the envelope with deliberate calm.
The paperwork was fifty pages of dense, hyper-litigious rhetoric. It painted Julian as the visionary patron who had provided the "stable domestic environment and executive counsel" that allowed a struggling lab technician to blossom into a celebrated scientist. It claimed that the dissolution of our marriage was an act of calculated bad faith, orchestrated to deny him his rightful co-ownership of medical advancements worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Attached to the legal brief was a handwritten note on lined, yellow legal paper. The handwriting was unmistakable: the same erratic, heavy-handed scrawl that had once demanded I leave my keys on the granite counter so his pregnant cousin could take my home.
*Sarah,* the note read.
*You took everything from me. You walked away with the life that belonged to the Montgomery name, while my mother rots in an assisted facility and I live in squalor. You think your fancy galas and your new husband make you untouchable. They don't. Jonathan Cross knows what you are, and he's going to make sure the entire world sees it. Settle this for fifty million, or I will drag your foundation's name through every tabloid in this country. I’m not asking anymore.*
I read the words once, twice, and then felt an emotion that surprised me: I didn't feel rage, nor did I feel fear.
I felt profound, absolute pity.
Julian had lived in the prison of his own entitlement for so long that he genuinely believed the universe owed him a lifestyle he had never earned. Even now, after losing his status, his money, and his youth to his own indolence, he still believed that my success was a fruit stolen from his tree.
May you like
I folded the yellow note neatly, walked over to my desk, and placed it inside a clear plastic evidence sleeve. Then, I picked up my phone and dialed Eleanor.
"Eleanor," I said calmly. "Julian sent a handwritten extortion demand alongside the summons. Let's schedule his deposition for next Tuesday. Do not offer a single penny in settlement. Let Jonathan Cross spend every dollar he has. It's time to put this ghost into the ground once and for all."
