Shattered Illusions: The Wife He Left for Dead novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Papers

Mireille signs the divorce papers and waives every claim to Hayes money, then watches Killian ask for her in the lobby from the stairwell. His text arrives: he will not sign.

Roz Keane walked into my hospital room at nine with a leather briefcase and a coat over her arm.

She had been my father's friend for thirty years, and she did not say hello.

She walked to the bed, turned my head with two fingers, and looked at the stitches.

"Who did this?"

"Killian."

"With what?"

"His hands. And the marble floor in the hall."

Roz took out her phone and photographed the back of my head, then my wrist, where the bracelet had left a red line.

"I'm not asking you to press charges today," she said. "I'm asking you to let me keep the pictures."

"Keep them."

"What do you want?"

"A divorce," I said. "Today. Before he comes."

"He'll offer you half of everything. A court will give you a third."

"I don't want a third."

Roz sat down on the edge of the visitor chair and waited.

"Killian paid thirty-eight million dollars of my family's debt," I said. "Everyone in Boston knows the number."

"I know the number."

"Then put it in writing that I take nothing from him. Not the house, not the allowance, not my own clothes if he wants them back."

"Mireille."

"Nobody gets to say I stayed for his money or left with it."

Roz took a long breath and unlatched the briefcase.

"I drew up the shortest version two years ago," she said. "After your father's funeral. I hoped I'd never need it."

I stared at her.

"You drew up my divorce two years ago?"

"I drew up your exit. You stood at that funeral looking at Killian, and he looked at his phone." She laid the pages on the tray table. "Sign where the flags are."

There were six flags.

I signed the first one, and my hand shook, and I signed the second one steadier.

At the fourth flag I stopped.

The line said: Wife waives all claims to the property, income and name of Hayes Holdings.

"My name stays Peabody," I said. "Put that in."

"It's in. Last page."

A nurse came in to check my pupils and Roz asked her to witness the signatures.

The nurse watched me sign the last page and did not ask a single question.

When she left, I took the glass bracelet from the tray and put it in Roz's hand.

"Give that back to him with the ring."

"With a note?"

"No."

"He'll be at the desk downstairs," I said. "He'll be looking for me by now."

Roz sealed the ring, the bracelet and a second set of the signed pages in a courier envelope.

She kept the originals in her briefcase and handed the envelope to the nurse.

"Give this to the husband when he asks," she said. "Not before."

"There's a fire stairwell by the west elevators," she said. "I parked on the service side."

I got out of bed in a hospital gown and Roz's spare coat.

My legs held, which surprised me.

We went down five flights of the concrete stairwell, and on the ground floor there was a narrow window of wired glass in the door.

I looked through it.

Killian stood at the front desk.

He wore yesterday's shirt, and he had not shaved, and he held a bunch of white roses with the paper still on.

"Mireille Hayes," he told the woman at the desk. "Head injury. An ambulance brought her in last night."

His voice was flat and low, the voice he used for board meetings, and under it I could hear that he was afraid.

I had waited three years to hear him afraid of anything.

I pressed my thumb to the red line on my wrist, and I did not go to him.

The woman at the desk lifted a courier envelope from the counter.

"A nurse left this for you, Mr. Hayes. The patient's lawyer said you'd come."

Killian tore the flap open.

My ring slid out into his palm.

The glass bracelet fell after it and hit the desk with a small flat click.

He picked it up and turned it over, and he read the first page.

I watched him read the second.

I watched him reach the last page, with my signature and my name, Mireille Peabody, in my own hand.

His face did not move.

His hand closed on the papers and tore them across the middle.

He tore them again.

The desk staff stopped typing.

"I'm not signing this," he said, to nobody.

He folded the torn halves and put them in his breast pocket with the ring.

"She's my wife," he told the woman at the desk. "Nobody discharges her until I say so."

"Sir, she's an adult. If she wants to leave..."

"Nobody," Killian said.

I pushed the bar on the service door and walked out into a cold white morning.

Roz had parked the car at the curb with the engine running.

"He can't hold you," she said, as I got into the passenger seat.

"He just tried."

"It was the second set he tore, Mireille. I have the originals in the case."

I put my forehead against the cold window and said nothing.

My head hurt, and the ten stitches pulled, and I was free.

We were at the first stoplight when Roz's phone buzzed on the dash.

She read the screen and her mouth went thin.

"It's from Hayes Holdings counsel," she said. "Mr. Hayes will not sign. He says it's a misunderstanding. He says he will fight this for as long as it takes."

"Then let him fight," I said.

"He has a great many lawyers."

"I have a coat of yours and ten stitches."

Roz almost smiled, and then the light turned green.

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