At 1:03 p.m., every phone inside the private hospital suite buzzed at the exact same second

The next morning, at 10:00 a.m., I received a visitor at my suburban home.

It wasn't a process server, and it wasn't an executive delegation from Vanguard. It was Chloe Bennett.

She stood on my front porch wearing an oversized trench coat that hid her baby bump, huge dark sunglasses covering half her face, and flat sneakers instead of the four-inch Christian Louboutin heels she usually wore like weapons. Without her retinue of makeup artists and expensive clothes, she looked astonishingly young, frail, and utterly broken.

I opened the front door, keeping the security screen locked between us.

“Julianna,” she whispered through the mesh. Her lips were cracked, and beneath the dark lenses of her glasses, I could see the yellow-purple edges of a severe bruise blooming across her left temple. “Please. Don't shut the door.”

“You shouldn't be here, Chloe,” I said evenly. “The press is watching every property associated with Richard. If they followed you here, you’ve put my children at risk.”

“No one followed me,” she said frantically, looking back over her shoulder at the quiet, tree-lined suburban street. “I took three different subways. I left my phone in a trash can at Grand Central. I don't have anywhere else to go. My bank accounts were frozen an hour ago by the SEC. My landlord locked me out of my apartment because Richard stopped paying the corporate lease. Donald is being arraigned right now in federal court, and my mother won't even answer my calls.”

I looked at her through the screen.

Twenty-four hours ago, she had slid a ten-thousand-dollar check across a polished conference table and looked at me as though I were nothing more than an insect to be brushed off her designer gown. She had told me that Matthew and Lily were only going to complicate Richard’s life.

“What do you want from me, Chloe?” I asked, keeping my voice free of both anger and pity.

“The check,” she choked out, a fresh wave of tears spilling down her cheeks, pooling at the edge of her collar. “The ten thousand dollars. Did you cash it?”

The sheer irony was almost poetic.

“No,” I said. “I didn't cash it.”

“Please give it back to me,” she begged, pressing her forehead against the wooden frame of the screen door. “I don't have money for a hotel room. I don't have money for food. Dr. Evans told me I need prenatal vitamins and complete bed rest or I’m going to lose the baby. I have seventy-two dollars in my purse, Julianna. That’s all I have left in the world.”

I stood there in the quiet hallway of my home, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the faint sound of Matthew and Lily laughing upstairs as they watched cartoons with my mother.

I could have laughed in her face. I could have told her that actions have consequences, that the universe had simply returned the cruelty she had dealt out so casually to two innocent children. Every instinct of human vengeance whispered that she deserved every ounce of this cold, bitter pavement.

Instead, I turned around, walked over to the console table in the foyer, and picked up my designer handbag.

I reached inside, pulled out the folded check she had thrown at me yesterday, and unfolded it. Then, very carefully, I reached into the drawer, pulled out a black pen, and endorsed the back with my signature before taking out five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from my own wallet.

I walked back to the screen door, unlocked it, and pushed it open three inches.

I handed her the check and the cash.

Chloe stared at the money in my hand, her mouth trembling, unable to process what she was seeing.

“You can cash the check at the branch on Fourth Street,” I told her, my voice quiet, clinical, and completely detached. “My signature will release the hold. The five hundred dollars will pay for your cab and a room at the women’s shelter near the hospital.”

“Julianna...” she whispered, her hands shaking violently as she took the bills. “Why? After what I did to your family?”

“I’m not doing this for you, Chloe,” I said, looking down at her stomach. “I’m doing this because that child didn't ask to be born into your greed or Richard’s vanity. That baby is entirely innocent of the world you tried to build around it.”

She looked down at the money, then looked up at me, shame burning so brightly across her face that she couldn't maintain eye contact.

“Take the money and leave this city, Chloe,” I added, stepping back into the house. “Find a quiet clinic in the Midwest. Have your baby. And never, for as long as you live, let your child know that you tried to trade its existence for a corporate balance sheet.”