I overheard one of his oldest business partners in the hallway, his voice low and urgent.

“You cannot risk your entire empire for a woman you met three days ago.”

And Bruce’s answer, without a beat of hesitation: “If I have to abandon an innocent woman and three children to protect my reputation, then my reputation isn’t worth protecting. And neither is the work.”

That night he sat down across from me and told me plainly where things stood. Agatha’s whole strategy, he said, now rested on one point — that I had no stable home, no means, no standing.

That I was a transient with no husband and no money, and that my children therefore belonged with their grandmother.

His lawyers were building a defense.