He Signed the Divorce Without Reading Page Nine novel · Chapter 2 of 48

Chapter 2: The Handover

Claire gives Madison the handover binder with her written warning about the Glow Drop serum, and Madison signs for it. Trevor keeps her grandmother's notebooks, and Claire tells his mother about the vasectomy. Patricia answers: prove it.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in the dark with one question: early for what?

At five in the morning I called the party planner, who owed me a favor, and asked who the tall man at the coat check was.

"He wasn't on the list," she said. "Security thought he came with you."

I had never seen him in my life, and I could not decide whether that frightened me.

Then I put the question in a drawer, because the lab came first.

Madison was sitting on my lab bench when I walked in.

Not standing beside it. Sitting on it, with her sneakers swinging and her iced latte leaving a wet ring on the steel I had wiped down twice a day for ten years.

"Claire!" She hopped down and pressed a hand to her heart. "I'm so sorry about last night. Trevor promised to tell you privately."

"I'm fine," I said.

"It's so brave, starting over at your age."

I was thirty-six.

I let that sit between us so we could both look at it.

Then I set a black binder on the bench.

It was four inches thick, tabbed and laminated, and it held ten years of my work.

"The handover," I said. "Tab one is every active formula, with batch sheets and stability data."

"Tab two is supplier contracts, including the three vendors who cut us off if an invoice runs past thirty days."

"Tab three is the FDA file, with two open observations from the last inspection."

Madison nodded along, bored.

"Tab four is your Glow Drop serum."

That woke her up.

It was her launch, her name on the bottle, her face on every billboard in SoHo in three weeks.

"Tab four is my written objection," I said. "Someone changed the preservative to save forty cents a bottle."

"The new one breaks down above seventy-seven degrees. When it breaks down, it burns skin."

"I flagged it twice. It needs six weeks of stability testing before one bottle ships. Read that tab twice."

She barely glanced at it.

"That's sweet, but I have a team," she said, smiling with all her veneers. "It's skincare, Claire. It isn't rocket science."

"Then sign."

I turned to the last page and held out a pen.

It was an Acknowledgment of Complete Technical Handover. Two copies, one line for her name.

"It says you received every formula, every objection and every compliance file," I said. "After today the lab is yours. Whatever happens next has nothing to do with me."

For one second Madison looked scared.

Then she signed, and she dotted her i with a little heart.

Trevor walked in as she capped the pen, with his mother behind him in head-to-toe Chanel.

He flipped two pages of the binder and dropped it on the bench.

Then he saw the box on my desk.

My grandmother's brass scale. Her photo in the rose garden. Her notebooks.

"Those stay," Trevor said. "The notebooks are company property."

"They're my grandmother's."

"If confidential material walks out that door, the IPO is exposed." He nodded to the guard in the doorway. "Search the box."

Patricia crossed her arms. "Honestly, Claire. Stealing on your way out. Have some dignity."

I had worked two years for no salary because Trevor said a wife shouldn't take a paycheck from her husband's company.

I had left my own father's funeral reception to fix a contaminated batch before the holiday launch.

I had made the night cream that Patricia put on her face every evening.

"Search everything," I said. "I'll wait."

Trevor blinked.

He had expected me to fight, and I was not fighting.

The guard took nine minutes.

They kept the notebooks.

They did not know I had scanned every page three months ago, with timestamps, and put the copies in my lawyer's vault.

They did not know the formulas had left the notebooks long before.

They lived in my head, and they lived in a trust.

I picked up the brass scale and the photograph.

Patricia walked me to the elevator herself.

"You should be grateful," she said, jabbing the button. "Madison is giving this family the heir you couldn't."

"Patricia," I said, "has Trevor ever told you why we stopped IVF?"

She frowned. "Because of you."

The doors opened.

I stepped in and turned around.

"Three years ago your son had a vasectomy. He made me swear not to tell anyone, because he didn't want to split the company with a child."

The color left her face all at once.

"Madison told him those fail one time in two thousand," I said. "He calls this baby his miracle."

"Then it is a miracle," Patricia whispered.

"It isn't," I said. "The last time I saw the paternity test."

I said it before I could take it back.

She stared at me.

"Last time?"

The doors began to close.

"I meant the last time he had a physical," I said. "The clinic sent me the paperwork. I kept it."

Patricia put her hand on the door and stopped it.

Her eyes went to the lab, where her son was laughing with Madison.

"If you are lying to me," she said slowly, "I will ruin you."

"If I'm lying, you'll have the pleasure."

She let the door go an inch, then pulled it back.

"Prove it," she said.

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