The Ten Percent Settlement

The key card clicked green and Adrian Hale walked into his own bedroom four hours early because the London deal had folded before dinner instead of after. He heard her first. A laugh he knew, pitched lower than she used it in public, and under it a man's voice he also knew, because he'd spent two years watching that voice underbid him in boardrooms. Victoria was on their bed with Marcus Whitfield's hand still tangled in her hair when the door opened. She didn't scream. She looked at Adrian the way she looked at a waiter who'd brought the wrong wine, mild irritation at bad timing, and said, "You're early." "I'm early," Adrian repeated. He set his briefcase down on the bench at the foot of the bed, the same bench where she'd once made him promise never to bring work into this room. Marcus had the decency to reach for his shirt. Victoria didn't reach for anything. "Say something," she said. "I'm thinking." "Adrian, please." "I said I'm thinking." He picked the briefcase back up. His hand wasn't shaking, which surprised him more than the sight on the bed had. "Get dressed. Both of you. Marcus, if you're still in this house in ten minutes I'll have security walk you out, and you know I mean it literally, because I built that security system myself." Marcus was already moving. Victoria stayed where she was, sheet pulled up now, watching Adrian's face like she was trying to read a contract she hadn't been given time to review. "This isn't what you think," she said. "It's exactly what I think. I watched it happen." "We can talk about this. People survive worse." "People survive a lot of things." He walked to the closet, pulled down the bag she kept for weekend trips, and started filling it with whatever was closest. Her robe. A pair of shoes. He wasn't being careful about it. "You have until morning to be somewhere else. I'll have Grace send your things wherever you tell her to send them." "You're throwing me out of my own house." "It's my house. It was my house before you moved into it and it'll be my house after you leave it." He zipped the bag and dropped it on the floor near her feet, hard enough that something inside it clattered. "I paid for the marriage counselor you canceled on twice last month. I paid for this bed. I did not, as it turns out, pay closely enough attention to who was using it." Marcus was gone. Adrian heard the front door two floors down, heard his own security wave a car through the gate without stopping it, because he'd told them years ago never to stop anyone Victoria cleared, and nobody had thought to update that instruction. That would be the first thing he changed. "You'll regret this," Victoria said. "You know what I can ask for." "I know exactly what you can ask for. I signed the prenup, remember. You made me feel guilty for asking you to sign it, and I let you talk me out of the version my lawyers wanted, and I'm sure right now you're grateful I'm that kind of fool." He picked his briefcase back up. "Ask for whatever the document allows. I won't fight the number. I'll fight everything else." He left her there and went downstairs to the study, where he kept a second phone that only three people had the number for. His lawyer answered on the second ring, half asleep. "I need papers filed by Monday," Adrian said. "Irreconcilable differences. And I need you to pull the prenup and tell me exactly what she's owed, because I want to pay it before she has to ask." "Adrian, it's midnight. Can this wait until morning?" "I'm aware of the time. I watched my wife with Marcus Whitfield forty minutes ago in the bed I bought her, and I would like this finished before I have to see either of their faces again in a business context, which given how this city works will be within the month." His lawyer went quiet for a moment. "The prenup caps her at ten percent of net marital assets, no matter what she claims in court. You're sure you don't want to contest the circumstances? a******y clauses can move that number." "I don't want to spend eighteen months in a courtroom watching lawyers argue about what she deserves. Ten percent. Give her ten percent and every document that makes this final, and get it to her by Friday." "That's generous." "It's fast. I don't care what it is as long as it's fast." He hung up before the lawyer could say anything else, and sat down at the desk that had been his father's, in the study his wife had wanted to redecorate twice and he'd refused both times, and for a while he didn't do anything at all. He didn't cry. He didn't throw anything. He sat with his hands flat on the desk and listened to her moving around upstairs, drawers opening, a suitcase wheel catching on the rug she'd chosen and he'd hated. By the time the sun came up she was gone, and the house was quiet in a way it hadn't been in six years, and Adrian Hale understood that the version of Friday where this ended with a signature and a check was the last easy thing that was going to happen to him for a long time, because Marcus Whitfield hadn't just taken his wife to bed. He'd been circling Hale Holdings for two years, and a man that patient didn't do anything, even this, without calculating what came after. Adrian picked up the first phone, the one everyone had the number for, and called his head of security. "I want everything on Marcus Whitfield," he said. "Everything. Starting now."