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My chest moves as I stifle a laugh. “What do you want to do with all this then?”
She holds me tighter and says, “Keep it.”
tony
“Anthony Daye Ladd.”
“Here, your honor.”
“I’m simply a mediator, you don’t have to call me your honor.”
My lawyer nods to me.
“Sorry. Where is she? I’d like to get this over with.”
“She’s in a separate room. We’ll talk and then I’ll bring her offer to you and we’ll go from there. A fair negotiation has to be attempted before you can get a court date.”
“Then what the hell was all this paperwork before we got married even for? Give her the house in the Catskills and Palm Beach condo. She gets no part of the Vineyard or business. I’m pretty sure someone can make 3.5 work for the rest of their damn lives. We have no children. I think there’s a cat at the dreaded mountain house but who the hell knows. Get her off my jock.”
The mediator, to her credit, says nothing and slides a piece of paper to me.
Gavin says, “Hell no,” before I can see it. “Having handled Mr. Ladd’s previous dissolutions, I can say that this is outrageous. He’s being very generous. No artwork. None of it was obtained together. She didn’t purchase, pick out, or even want any of it until she figured out the worth of the collection. She also has an arrest in association with trying to steal vintage furniture pieces and the artwork listed in this proposal.”
“Here’s my counter: 2.5 and I’ll buy her a paint by numbers kit.” I stand up, and my lawyer points back to the chair.
“For this to count, and in order to get to a judge and a court date, you have to counteroffer in good faith.”
I look at the rest of the proposal: fifty million dollars, stock, a piece of my trust, a piece of Ladd Media, the Vineyard house, Palm Beach condo, the Catskills house, artwork, furniture, and my Boston penthouse, which I had long before her. There’s a long-ass list of more shit, but she wants cars and furs and jewels. Heirlooms are what she’s after. She comes from money, not as much as we have, but enough that this greed isn’t tracking with the woman I married.
“Keep the ring and the aforementioned houses. I’ll buy her out of the Boston Penthouse, which she lived in for two of the twelve years I’ve owned it. That will be an additional fifteen million, three cars, the cat we may or may not have, and she can have the Noguchi coffee table. I always bang my shins on that thing. And she can have the slippery, pain-in-the-ass ivory sheets she insisted we buy. Final offer. She asks for one fucking cent more and not only do we go to court, but my offer becomes just the fucking cat and horribly expensive slippery sheets. Did you know Target makes a very cozy set of sheets? Toss in a set of those for her too. Final offer.”
She straightens the papers in front of her, and Gavin finishes scribbling. “Tell her to sign it and this is over.”
The woman leaves.
“I need this done.”
My lawyer sits back. “Have another wife on the hook?” He grins.
“Look, my tragic serial monogamy made you a very wealthy man, so shut your piehole. And you’re the asshole who drew up the dumb dating contract that ends—”
“July 4th.”
“Eloquent timing.”
“I thought so. It’s a week shy of your thirty-first birthday. But you do know if wifey drags this out you have to remain unattached until you’re financially unattached. She’s fighting for a piece of the company and we can’t give her any ammunition.”
“Why does who I fuck have anything to do with it?”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Your reputation directly effects Ladd’s bottom line and right now your father is, well, talk to him.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket. “I have to take this.” I’m not allowed to leave the room, but I turn away from him to read.
MAK: You ok? Are you free? Why does the caged bird sing?
