I picked up the pen, turned to the last page, and signed my name. Every stroke deliberate.
My hand didn't shake.
Victor clearly hadn't expected that.
He'd probably assumed I would cry, make a scene, do what I always did when he came home late—ask him with red-rimmed eyes if he'd stopped loving me.
But there was a lot he didn't know.
He didn't know I wasn't an orphan.
He didn't know my father's name was Joshua Henson.
He didn't know that the thirty million in funding that saved his company from the grave—I got that money by kneeling outside my father's study and begging.
I finished signing and stood up.
At four months, my belly was just starting to show, but in the loose clothes I'd been wearing, he hadn't noticed.
He never noticed what I wore, whether I'd gained or lost weight, whether I looked well or not.
“Bernie.” He stopped me from behind, his voice dripping with that charitable kind of gentleness—like he was doing me a favor. “Don't go hating me over this. Belinda and I have known each other since we were kids. If she hadn't gone abroad, we would've been together a long time ago. You've been good to me all these years, I know. But feelings aren't something you can force.”
He pushed the house deed and bank cards across the table：“Take them. It's enough to get by. If you ever need anything, you can come to me.”
I told him I didn't need them.
Walking out of the villa, the sun hit so hard I could barely keep my eyes open.
I stopped at the gate and sent him one last message.
“Victor, there's something I forgot to mention. That thirty million your company got? It was my father's money.”
Then I dialed a number.
“Piers, I need you to draw up a complaint for me.”
“The defendant is Victor Matthews.”
Three seconds of silence on the other end.
“Miss Henson, you've finally made up your mind.”
When I got home, my father was in his study reading documents.
He looked up at me for three seconds, took off his glasses：“Who?”
One word.
My father had always been a man of few words. Everyone who did business with him said the same thing: every word that came out of Joshua Henson's mouth was worth a million dollars.
But the words he saved for me were never the expensive kind.
“Victor Matthews. His first love came back from overseas. We're divorced. I walked away with nothing.”
My father said nothing. He picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Piers, it's me. Bernie says it's done. She walked out with nothing. Handle it.”
The whole call took less than thirty seconds.
He hung up, lowered his head back to his documents, his voice perfectly level：“Bernie, you're home now, so stay. When your mother passed, she told me to take care of you. These past few years, I haven't done a good job of that.”
The tears came all at once.
Not from hurt.
Because he'd found the one place inside me that had no armor at all.
After my mother died, my father kept this whole family afloat on his own—and still had to worry about a daughter who wouldn't listen.
The year I insisted on marrying Victor, he didn't say a word. On the wedding day, he stood in a far corner and looked at me just once.
Everything in that look—I didn't understand it then.
I understood now.
“Dad, I'm going to sue him.”
“Do it.”
“I'm going to make him give back everything he took from me.”
My father raised his head and looked at me：“Bernie, whatever you want, I'll give you. But one thing—from now on, you don't bend yourself for anyone. You are Joshua Henson's daughter. No one in this family was born to be wronged.”
I wiped my tears and nodded.
Piers brought the lawsuit documents over that same night. A thick stack, over forty pages—concealment of marital assets, malicious transfer of property, evidence of infidelity during the marriage, irregularities in the company's books.
“One more thing.” Piers flipped to the last page. “Bigamy.”
I looked up：“Bigamy?”
“Victor Matthews and Belinda Winfield registered a marriage in Las Vegas seven years ago. It was never dissolved.”
