I looked past her to Lucas. “Is this true?”

Lucas finally raised his head, his face pale and full of shame. “Amelia, I… I was transferring most of my paycheck to Mom to pay off her old credit cards and her car loan. I thought since you made so much at Meridian, it wouldn’t matter if you handled the house. I didn’t think you’d actually leave. I didn’t know the house was entirely in your name.”

“You didn’t think it would matter,” I repeated slowly. “You let me pay for every meal, every light bill, every tax payment, while you played the generous son with your own money, and then you sat there silently while your mother demanded three thousand more a month for the privilege of being married to you.”

“I was wrong,” Lucas whispered, his voice cracking. “Please. Just unfreeze the accounts so we can pay the bills. We can talk about everything else later.”

Marjorie looked up at me from the floor, her eyes wide with a genuine terror I had never seen in her before. “I’ll tear up the paper,” she wept, her voice high and desperate. “I won’t ever ask for a single dollar again. Just please, don’t throw my son out. Don’t take the car away. We’re family, Amelia!”

I looked down at the two of them—the woman who had tried to put a monthly price tag on my dignity, and the husband who had traded my trust for his mother’s approval. The anger that had been burning in my chest for six days suddenly vanished, replaced by a profound, cooling clarity.

“We aren’t a family, Marjorie,” I said softly, my voice carrying clearly across the quiet lobby. “A family built on deceit and financial extraction isn’t a family at all. It’s a transaction.”

I turned to look at Lucas. “The locks on the house will be changed at five o’clock today. Your personal clothes and personal belongings have been packed into boxes and placed in the garage. You have until seven o’clock tonight to pick them up. Everything else will be handled strictly through my attorney.”

“Amelia, please!” Marjorie begged, reaching for my shoe, but I took a step back, out of her reach.

“You put a price on my marriage, Marjorie,” I said quietly. “And now you’re learning what it actually costs.”

Without another word, I turned around and walked back toward the private elevators. Behind me, the muffled sound of Marjorie’s weeping echoed off the glass walls, but I didn’t look back once.