After They Ate Me Alive, I Fought Back

Chapter 7—Turning the Tables

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper.

There, in my own bedroom, the universe had just delivered a baby’s worth of poetic justice straight into Nathan Cole’s open mouth. If I believed in signs, that was the sign.

I kept my face flat. “What’s going on?”

Nathan gagged, bolted for the bathroom, and came back rinsing his mouth, looking vaguely like a man who’d just lost an argument with a garden hose. “It’s just a little—“ He waved a hand. “Baby pee is clean. It’s fine.”

“Maybe.” I kept my distance, and not because of the urine. “But I’m afraid I can’t build a bond with your brother under the current circumstances.”

He glanced at Liam on the bed, then back at me, and launched into it: how he’d told Doris about the divorce, how she’d flown into a rage and torn up the living room, how she’d nearly hurt the baby, so he’d brought Liam in here to keep him safe.

“Mm.” I folded my arms. “So what’s the plan?”

“Hotel tonight. Then I rent her a place in the city.” He hesitated. “But she says she won’t accept the divorce, and she won’t accept me leaving with nothing. If we don’t cancel the filing, she says she’s staying put.”

“And if we cave now, she’ll walk all over us for the rest of our lives.” I said it flat, and I watched the surprise cross his face. “No. Let me talk to her. But we present a united front—whatever I do, whatever I say, you stand behind me.”

He opened his mouth. I stepped into him, forehead against his shoulder, and let my voice go soft and a little wounded, the way it always worked on him.

“I’m not attacking your mom. I’m trying to win the first battle for us—for our future. Once she agrees to raise Liam herself and step back where she belongs, I’ll help her financially, however she needs.” I tilted my head up. “And Liam is so cute. It makes me want a baby of my own. After the divorce, we’ll do IVF.”

His expression flickered—something warm and greedy—then settled into tenderness. “IVF is hard on you.”

“I don’t care.” I smiled up at him. “If it gets us a child, every bit of hard turns sweet.”

“Then let me handle my mother,” he said. “You’re no match for her. Stand behind me.”

“No.” I patted his chest. “She’s held you hostage with guilt your whole life, and you’ve protected me for five years. This time, I protect you. You watch Liam.”

I turned and opened the bedroom door—

—and there was Doris, frozen mid-lean, ear practically suction-cupped to the wood.

She didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. She straightened up and let fly, loud as a barnyard alarm. “Fine, let’s be honest. A hen that can’t lay an egg, a woman who’d leave my family line to die out—I’ve looked down on you for years. I’d rather my son stay single forever than keep a poisonous thing like you in this house. But divorce doesn’t mean he walks away with nothing! Without my son, Whitmore would have gone bankrupt or been sold off years ago. He built it into what it is. The assets get split properly, and not one cent shortchanges my son!”

She went on and on, clucking and sputtering.

I didn’t give her a glance. I pulled out my phone and photographed the wrecked living room—the slashed cushions, the shattered glass, my mother’s painting face-down on the floor. Then I hit record and panned the room, slowly, like a crime-scene tech doing inventory.

Doris lunged for the phone. I turned the camera on her face. Her raised fist stopped mid-air, hovered, and—under the unblinking lens and Nathan’s sharp “Mom!”—finally dropped.

Good. Let it be on video. Let every frame of it be on video.

I know better than to fight two people alone. So while Doris stood there vibrating with rage, I texted the building concierge for two able-bodied security guards. Then I called the appliance company’s after-sales line. Then my lawyer.

The guards were up in three minutes. I handed them each a drink and asked them to stay close.

Then I called the police.

Doris lunged for my phone again. The guards stopped her cold. Nathan, from the doorway, tried to calm me—this is a family matter, let’s keep it in the family, don’t escalate—and I didn’t so much as look at him while I gave the dispatcher a calm, precise account of the situation.

The police came. Then the lawyer. Then the after-sales assessor.

I had the assessor price out every item Doris had destroyed, and I had the lawyer record it all. Then I stated my terms, clearly, in front of everyone:

“One—Doris Cole pays for every cent of the damage she caused, or I sue her for it. Two—I have video proving she is prepared to use violence against me. I’m requesting, with police assistance, that she be removed from my home.”

Doris wailed louder than the baby, out-martyrdom-ing every wronged woman in history. She told the police I abused her. She told the lawyer the house belonged to her son.

I didn’t blink. “This apartment is in my name. I paid for it in full, and my name is the only one on the deed. And I filed for divorce this morning—a divorce in which the husband himself offered to leave with nothing. So until the certificate is issued, the husband will also be moving out.”

Doris whipped her head toward her son.

And Nathan—careful, calculating Nathan—knew exactly which way the wind was blowing. “I’ll cover the damages,” he said. “And I’ll move out with my mother today.”

“Half an hour,” I said. “Start packing.”

That’s when Doris snapped. She grabbed a broken chair leg off the floor and swung it at my head.

The police and the guards caught her arm before it got anywhere near me. I didn’t flinch. I turned to my lawyer, unhurried, and said, “Can I press charges?”

“Yes,” she said.

Doris screamed something about fighting me to the death. And Nathan—for the first time in our entire marriage—raised his voice at his mother.

“Enough!” he snapped. “The divorce is between me and Elena. It has nothing to do with you. If you want to spend the rest of your life in a cell, then by all means, keep it up. I won’t stop you.”

It sounded like fairness. It was, of course, a warning—stop performing before you blow the whole thing.

Doris, for all her theatrics, understood her son perfectly. She sniffled, dabbed at her eyes, scooped up Liam, and walked out.

Nathan promised the police he’d handle the compensation and the separation. He transferred me twenty thousand dollars on the spot, and signed an IOU for the rest.

Then the police left. The lawyer left. The guards left.

And it was just the two of us, in the ruins of a living room, and I finally walked to the bedroom where Nathan stood packing clothes into a suitcase.

I wrapped my arms around him from behind and rested my cheek against his back.

“You’re not angry with me,” I said, soft, “for how I handled your mom?”

Because you should be terrified, sweetheart. Because that was the first time anyone in this house ever said no to you. And it’s not going to be the last.