“Before I sign, Your Honor, I’d like to submit one final piece of evidence.”
The request was soft, barely rising above the hum of the courtroom’s climate control, yet it stopped the world on its axis. The atmosphere in the room turned heavy and pressurized, like the air in the seconds before a tornado touches down. My wife, Lenora, was already wearing a victorious smirk. It was the same look she had carried for eight months, ever since she slapped the divorce papers onto the kitchen island next to my morning coffee. It was the smile of a woman who had played a long, cruel game and finally reached the finish line.
Her lawyer, a high-priced predator named Desmond Pratt, sat with a Montblanc pen hovering in the air. He was waiting for me to sign the final decree—the document that would officially dismantle our fifteen-year marriage. According to the terms they had dictated, Lenora would receive the suburban house, both vehicles, our entire savings, and full physical custody of our three children. Most importantly, I would be legally bound to pay $4,200 a month in child support for the next eighteen years. It was nearly a million dollars of future labor, a lifetime of work signed away in a few strokes of ink.
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