The divorce was not a fight, because there was nothing to fight over. I got everything, because everything was already mine. I got primary custody of Theodore, easily, because a man who abandons his wife and newborn on a curb five days after surgery does not win a custody battle against the mother he abandoned. Gabriel left the marriage with what he came in with, which was charm, ambition, and a family that had helped him mistreat a woman they all thought was powerless.
My father never had to make a single threatening call. That's the part people expect — the four-star commander bringing the hammer down. He didn't need to. The law did all of it. My father's only real contribution was the foresight, years earlier, to make sure his daughter's name was on her own things, so that the day a man showed her who he was, she could leave with everything and owe him nothing. That's not military power. That's just a father who loved his daughter enough to protect her before she knew she'd need protecting.
