Chapter 4
Thirteen years ago, the sterile white walls of the downtown law office had smelled faintly of stale coffee and impending corporate doom when Julian traded his family. Victoria’s father, a ruthless real estate tycoon, had cornered a twenty-three-year-old Julian with a simple ultimatum: sign the divorce papers, abandon the pregnant Elena, and inherit a seat on the board. Terrified of poverty and intoxicated by the glittering promise of high society, Julian had traded his soul for a gilded cage and a trust fund built on other people's blood.
He had convinced himself that Elena would move on, that the unborn child would be provided for by charity, and that convenience would eventually overwrite conscience. But standing here under the glaring lights of the national intellectual tournament, Julian realized that conscience has a very long memory and an even sharper blade. The wealth he had accumulated through Victoria’s empire was nothing more than ashes compared to the brilliant, independent minds his abandoned wife had raised entirely alone.
