Finn's POV
Daniel picked the meeting spot himself—a dive bar on Fifth and Monroe that reeks of spilled beer and desperation. The neon sign in the window buzzes with an electrical hum that sets my teeth on edge.
I suggested the private room at Laurent's, somewhere we could handle this like civilized men. He countered with this establishment, probably believing that dragging me into his territory would shift the power dynamic in his favor.
The sticky floors pull at the soles of my shoes with each step, and the flickering television above the bar casts blue shadows across the stained wood paneling—everything tells me where his life has landed since the disbarment.
Exactly where it belongs.
Daniel is already seated in a booth near the back when I arrive, his shoulder hunched beneath a jacket that hangs looser than it should, the fabric pulling at an odd angle over the wound she gave him.
Good. The memory of Aubrey's voice when she told me about the scissors—trembling, apologetic, as if defending herself required forgiveness—makes my jaw tighten.
I slide into the seat across from him and set a manila folder on the sticky tabletop between us. The vinyl seat releases a sigh of stale air beneath my weight, and the overhead lamp swings slightly.
"You have some nerve calling this meeting." Daniel's voice carries bravado. "After what you did to my life, you think I want to sit here and have a drink with you?"
"I think you want to hear what I am offering before you decide whether to be offended." I keep my voice level, my hands flat on the table where he can see them. "The folder contains divorce papers. You sign them right now, and I pay off every debt you have accumulated over the past seven years."
His eyes narrow, and I watch him calculate.
There it is—the flicker of greed beneath the wounded pride.
He cannot help himself. Men like Daniel always have a price because men like Daniel have never possessed anything that was not for sale.
The gambling debts alone would take him a decade to clear on whatever salary he can scrape together now that his license is gone. The loan sharks have probably already started circling.
"You expect me to just hand her over to you?"
Daniel leans back against the cracked vinyl of the booth, crossing his arms over his chest in a posture that might read as confident if his hands were not trembling.
"Aubrey is still my wife. And whatever problems we have, they are between us."
"Your 'wife' has been living in my apartment for the past week."
I let the information settle between us, watching his expression shift. At first through surprise, then denial, and finally a bitter acceptance that tells me he suspected as much.
"She is not returning to you, Daniel. The only question is whether you make this difficult or whether you walk away with your dignity intact."
"Dignity." He laughs, and the sound grates against my eardrums like something corroded. "You want to talk to me about dignity while you steal another man's wife?"
I think about the bruises I traced on Aubrey's neck. The way she flinches when doors slam too loudly. The fear that this man built inside her over years of marriage.
My fingers curl against the tabletop, and I imagine wrapping them around his throat. I imagine the satisfying crunch of cartilage, the panic in his eyes, the justice of watching him experience even a fraction of the terror he inflicted on her.
I could end him right here.
I could make it look like self-defense—the disgraced attorney who lunged at the billionaire CEO in a fit of drunken rage.
No jury would convict me. No one would mourn him.
Instead, I push the folder closer to him and pull a pen from my jacket pocket.
"Sign the papers, Daniel. Take the money. Walk away while you still have the option to do so with minimal consequences."
He studies me for a long moment. His blue eyes bloodshot at the edges, the whites gone yellow in a way that speaks to liver damage or sleepless nights or both, searching my face for weakness.
Then he reaches for the pen with a smirk that makes my stomach turn.
"You know what I cannot figure out?" He opens the folder and begins flipping through the pages, scanning the legal language without really reading it. "What a man like you could possibly see in someone like her. She doesn't exactly belong in your world, does she?"
"Sign the damn papers in silence."
"She cannot cook worth a shit, did you know that?" He scrawls his signature on the first page, then the second, his pen moving with careless contempt. "And the nagging… My God, the constant nagging about money and responsibility and all the things she thought I should be doing differently."
I watch him sign and feel the rage building in my chest like pressure behind a dam. My pulse throbs in my temples, a steady drumbeat that drowns out the jukebox and the pool game and everything else in this godforsaken bar.
Each insult he throws at Aubrey lands in my body like a blow, but I hold myself still. Because the goal is the signature, the goal is her freedom, the goal is removing this man from her life permanently.
"Oh, and I should probably mention," Daniel continues, his voice taking on a gleeful edge, "your little girlfriend is pregnant. Did she bother to tell you that before you moved her into your fancy apartment?"
"I know about the pregnancy." I keep my voice steady, letting a small smile curve my mouth. "I am the one who gave her that child, after all."
The pen stops moving and Daniel's head snaps up.
I watch the realization dawn across his features. The thought that his wife was unfaithful. That the baby she carries belongs to another man. That he has been cuckolded in the most fundamental way possible.
Pathetic bastard.
"You lying piece of—" His voice cracks with wounded pride, and something vicious enters his expression. "You know what? I hope she loses this one too. I hope you get to watch her bleed out another baby the way she did the first. That whore is incapable of giving birth anyway, though I think you will learn this soon enough."
The words land in my chest like shrapnel.
Aubrey… lost a child before?
She never told me. And this piece of garbage is sitting across from me using that grief as a weapon.
The air in my lungs turns to concrete. The bar noise fades to a distant roar, and all I can hear is my own blood rushing past my eardrums. Daniel sees my expression change, and his smile widens. He has found the wound he was looking for, and he is twisting the knife with obvious pleasure.
I pull out my phone and complete the transfer without speaking.
The notification pings on his device seconds later, and I turn the screen to show him the confirmation. Then I reach into my jacket and pull out my wallet. I count out five hundred dollars in cash and lay the bills on the table between us, smoothing them flat.
"What the hell is that for?" Daniel looks at the money, then at me, confusion replacing the triumph in his eyes.
"Medical expenses." I hold his gaze as I speak. "You are going to need them."
His brow furrows with the question he does not have time to ask, because my fist connects with his jaw before he can even finish forming the thought.