He refused to sign that day — his pride needed a little more breaking — but with no income and the pressure mounting, he eventually had his lawyer call mine, and he signed a provisional agreement to vacate, stay away, and return everything that was the company’s.

Corinna refused to pack.

“This house belongs to my son!” she screamed at the movers, until Isolde produced the deed records showing it had been funded almost entirely by my income, his name added early out of a good faith I no longer felt, and no legal right of occupancy attached to her at all.

In the end the two of them moved to a small apartment on the far edge of the city with the clothes and the few pieces of furniture they’d actually bought themselves, each item logged by the notary so there could be no argument later about what was whose.

At the hearing a month on, Dashiell arrived in a wrinkled suit beside a cut-rate lawyer who spent more breath on a wife’s traditional duties than on any evidence, and demanded half my house, half my company, and primary custody on the theory that my travel made me unfit.

Isolde took it all apart with bank records and contracts and audit reports and the footage, and showed the court the messages proving he saw custody as a lever to pull money out of me.