Jocelyn’s POV
The foundation board meets without me.
I find out because my assistant—former assistant—calls from a blocked number to warn me.
"Jocelyn, they're voting right now. Emergency session. Diana Morrison called it." Sarah's voice is hushed, guilty. "I'm sorry. I thought you should know."
"Voting on what?"
"Your removal. From the board, from everything."
The words don't process at first. "I founded the organization. They can't."
"They're citing reputational damage. Saying your association with the trial compromises the foundation's mission." She pauses. "I'm so sorry."
The call ends.
I'm still holding the phone when the official email arrives twenty minutes later.
Dear Ms. Hartwell-Wolfe,
After careful deliberation, the Board of Directors has voted to terminate your position as Executive Director of the Wolfe-Hartwell Foundation, effective immediately. This decision reflects our commitment to maintaining public trust and protecting the organization's mission from controversy that could undermine our work with vulnerable populations.
Your contributions are appreciated, but given recent publicity surrounding your testimony in the Caruso trial, the board feels this separation is in the foundation's best interests.
I read it three times. My foundation. The organization I built from nothing. Programs I designed, families I helped, years of work condensed into "recent publicity" and "reputational damage."
Gone because I did the right thing and testified against a mobster.
Helena calls an hour later. "Did you see?"
"Yeah."
"Joss, I'm so sorry. Diana Morrison is a coward and I told her so directly." Anger crackles through the line. "She's scared donors will pull funding if your name stays attached. It's pure politics."
"It's effective politics." I sink onto the couch, staring at the email. "The foundation needs money to operate. If I'm toxic to donors…"
"Then they should defend you! You took down a criminal organization!"
"I also stayed married to a man with six secret children and profited from money laundering." The bitterness tastes like copper. "Diana's not wrong, my presence does compromise the mission."
"That's bullshit and you know it."
Maybe. But bullshit backed by a unanimous board vote is still binding.
***
Zayden's call comes that afternoon.
"Emergency shareholder meeting," he says without preamble. "They're forcing me out."
I close my eyes. "When?"
"Now. They've already drafted the resignation letter." His laugh is hollow. "Apparently my 'pattern of deception and criminal association' makes me unfit to lead a publicly traded company."
"Can you fight it?"
"With what? My stellar reputation?" He exhales hard. "The board has votes to remove me with cause. Fighting means drawn-out litigation that destroys whatever credibility I have left. Resigning preserves some dignity."
"How much are they offering?"
Silence, long enough to tell me everything.
"Nothing," he says finally. "They're citing moral turpitude clauses in my contract. I built that company from my father's laundering operation, Jocelyn. Every asset is tainted. They're seizing control, restructuring under new leadership, and I walk away with nothing."
"That can't be legal!"
"It's perfectly legal when your entire fortune was built on a criminal enterprise." His voice cracks. "I'm signing the papers tonight. By tomorrow, I'll be officially unemployed."
We're both silent, processing the synchronized destruction of everything we built.
"The penthouse," I say quietly.
"Company property. Part of my compensation package." He doesn't need to finish. "We have thirty days to vacate."
***
The eviction notice arrives by courier at 9 AM the following Tuesday.
Formal, legal, absolutely unambiguous. We have four weeks to remove ourselves and our belongings from the penthouse that's been home for three years.
I walk through rooms that suddenly feel like borrowed space. Mia's bedroom with its custom paint and built-in bookshelves. Eli's room that Zayden decorated after Natasha died. The kitchen where we've shared a thousand meals.
All of it temporary, all of it belonging to a company that no longer wants Zayden's name attached to its assets.
"Where will we go?" Mia asks that night. She's been listening, processing with that careful intelligence that makes her seem older than six.
I look at Zayden. His expression tells me that he doesn't have answers either.
"Somewhere smaller," I say carefully. "Somewhere we can afford."
"Will Eli come too?"
The question makes my throat tight. "Of course, baby. We stay together."
Eli appears in the doorway, silent as always, clutching that tiger plush. "I don't need a big room. I can sleep anywhere."
"You're not sleeping anywhere," Zayden says firmly. "We'll find a place with room for everyone."
But finding that place proves harder than admitting it.
Our credit is destroyed. Every rental application gets denied the moment landlords google our names. The trial made us notorious—convicted criminal's accomplices, liars who profited from mob money, frauds who manipulated federal agents.
Nobody wants to rent to people with that reputation.
Helena offers her spare room. "Just temporarily. Until you find something."
"We can't impose—"
"You're not imposing. You're family." Her voice is fierce. "Take the room. Figure out next steps from there."
But even Helena's generosity has limits. Four people in a one-bedroom apartment designed for one doesn't work long-term.
The apartment we finally find is in Brooklyn.
Not trendy Williamsburg or gentrified Park Slope. Deeper Brooklyn, where rent is actually affordable because the building is fifty years past its prime and the neighborhood doesn't make tourists feel safe.
Two bedrooms, seventh floor walkup, windows that overlook an alley that smells like garbage and broken dreams.
The landlord—a man named Viktor who clearly doesn't follow news or google prospective tenants—accepts our application when I pay six months upfront in cash scraped together from what little savings survived legal fees.
"Is good apartment," Viktor says in heavily accented English, handing over keys. "Quiet building, no trouble."
I don't tell him we are the trouble.
When the last box is loaded, we stand in the empty penthouse one final time.
Marble floors echo our footsteps. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the city we're being forced to leave behind. Everything pristine, expensive, completely hollow without the life we built inside it.
"Ready?" Zayden asks quietly.
I take his hand. "No. But let's go anyway."
The new apartment looks smaller with our furniture crammed inside. Zayden and I get the master bedroom that's barely bigger than our old closet.
"It's cozy," I say, trying for optimism.
"It's a shoebox." He sets down a box labeled KITCHEN.
That night, we order pizza because unpacking the kitchen feels impossible. Sit on the floor eating from cardboard boxes while the kids explore their new room with cautious curiosity.
Later, kids settle into their bunk beds without complaint. Mia takes top, Eli bottom, both exhausted from moving day trauma.
Zayden and I collapse onto our bed—queen instead of king, mattress that's definitely seen better days, sheets that feel scratchy after years of Egyptian cotton.
"We lost everything," I whisper into darkness.
"Not everything." His arm wraps around me. "We're together. Kids are safe. Dante's in prison."
"We're broke, unemployed, living in a walkup apartment in a neighborhood where gunshots aren't uncommon."
"Yeah." He pulls me closer. "But we're alive, and we're not in witness protection. That's something."
I turn to face him. Even in dim light from the alley, I can see exhaustion carved into his features. The weight of losing his company, his home, his reputation.
"Was it worth it?" I ask. "Testifying. Doing the right thing. All of it."
He's quiet for a long time, long enough I think he might not answer.
"Ask me in a year," he says finally. "When we've rebuilt something. When the kids have adjusted. When this feels less like falling and more like landing."
"And if it still feels like falling?"
"Then we fall together."