Chapter 8 - The UltimatumTwo weeks later, Emily was discharged from St. Joseph Medical Center. Accompanied by her father, Arthur Vance, and a team of security specialists, she walked out the front doors of the hospital into the warm Mississippi sunshine, carrying Aiden in a car seat while a private transport nurse wheeled Savannah out to a waiting armored SUV.
Waiting across the private courtyard, leaning against a rusted, dented Ford sedan that clearly didn't belong to him anymore, was Michael.
He looked starved. His eyes were hollow pits, his shoulders slumped in utter defeat. As Emily appeared, he pushed off the car and took a hesitant step forward.
“Emily... please. Just five minutes. That’s all I’m asking,” Michael pleaded, his voice cracking violently.
Arthur Vance stepped in front of Emily, his hand resting on his suit jacket where a licensed firearm holster was concealed. “Step back, Mr. Whitman. You are in violation of a restraining order keeping you five hundred feet away from my daughter and her children.”
“Arthur, please... I just want to look at my children,” Michael begged, ignoring the older lawyer and staring directly into Emily’s calm, unreadable slate-gray eyes. “I lost everything, Em. Jessica left me the second the credit cards froze and the loft was repossessed. She didn't want me—she wanted the lifestyle. I was an idiot. I was a blind, arrogant fool. I know I don't deserve you... but please, let me be a father to Aiden and Savannah.”
Emily paused, shifting Aiden’s carrier slightly in her hand. She looked at the man she had loved for seven years—the man who had built cribs with his own hands while texting another woman behind her back.
“You want to be a father, Michael?” Emily’s voice was calm, clear, and carried the weight of absolute finality.
Michael nodded frantically. “Yes. Anything. I’ll sign away my rights to everything else. I’ll work seventy hours a week just to pay child support. Just let me see them grow up.”
“Listen to me very carefully,” Emily said, stepping around her father so she could look Michael dead in the eye. “You will sign the finalized divorce decree by tomorrow morning giving me sole legal and physical custody of Aiden and Savannah. You will not contest the asset forfeiture or the corporate restructuring. And you will move out of Mississippi within thirty days.”
Michael stared at her, horrified. “Sole custody? You’re cutting me out completely?”
“You cut yourself out the night you chose Jessica Monroe while I was carrying your children,” Emily replied without a single tremor in her voice. “You don't get custody, Michael. You get supervised visitation twice a month at my attorney's office, overseen by a court-appointed monitor—if, and only if, you prove you’re clean, stable, and willing to put the children’s needs ahead of your own selfish desires.”
She turned toward the SUV, opening the door and sliding inside beside her babies.
May you like
“That is your only offer, Michael,” Emily said over her shoulder as the heavy armored door began to close. “Take it, or spend the next twenty years fighting my father in federal court until you’re bankrupt in a prison cell. Goodbye, Michael.”
The heavy door slammed shut with a solid, echoing thud.
