The dining room was utterly silent apart from the steady, firm scratch of the nib moving over the heavy paper.

I turned to page fifteen, signed the secondary waiver, and flipped ahead to the final schedule of asset releases.

Spencer leaned in, his brow creasing as he watched the pen move without a moment’s hesitation.

He’d had two senior litigation lawyers waiting in the ground-floor library, ready for hours of hostile bargaining.

I finished the last line on page sixteen, capped the silver fountain pen, and laid it neatly across the center fold of the contract.

Then I reached up to my left hand, unclasped the thin gold chain at my neck, and slipped my platinum wedding band off my thumb.