Your Privileges End Tonight

Natalie's POV

Marissa Cole's office was on the eleventh floor of a glass building downtown, and it smelled like fresh coffee and printer toner.

I'd brought everything in a black document folder I bought at Staples on Sunday night. Eight years of marriage fit inside it with room to spare.

"Have a seat, Natalie."

Marissa was in her fifties, with silver hair cut sharp at the jaw and reading glasses pushed up on her head. She didn't do the sympathetic head tilt. I liked her immediately.

I opened the folder and laid it all out on her desk. Our marriage certificate, the raised county seal still crisp. Three months of joint account statements, with the $28,000 transfer to Meridian Private Recovery circled in pen. The clinic's consent withdrawal notice, his scanned signature at the bottom.

"I want a divorce," I said.

The words came out level. I'd expected them to shake.

Marissa picked up the bank statement and studied it for a long moment. Then she set it down and folded her hands.

"I ask everyone this, so don't take it personally. Is there any part of you that wants to try to repair this? Counseling, a separation period, anything?"

I looked down at my hands resting on the folder. The bruise on the back of my left hand had faded to a sick yellow-green, ringed with tiny pinprick scabs from the IV at my last blood draw. Alex hadn't noticed it. He'd been too busy cutting toast.

"No," I said. "I'm not here to ask how to save my marriage. I'm here to end it."

She nodded once and slid a retainer agreement across the desk. I signed it without hesitating.

"Then let's talk about what you want."

"I want the joint property divided the way the law says it should be. Fairly. I have a small savings account from before we got married, plus what my mother left me. I'll disclose every cent of it." I tapped the clinic notice. "But I won't let him use our embryos to push me into anything. That's not on the table."

"Good. Clear priorities make my job easier." She turned to her monitor and frowned. "Funny timing. His attorney emailed me this morning. Before you'd even officially hired me."

"How did he know?"

"I imagine the clinic told him you'd requested a lawyer be involved." She hit print. "He's been busy."

The printer hummed. She handed me eight warm pages, already marked in yellow highlighter.

*Proposed Marital Settlement Agreement.*

I read the first page and felt my face go hot.

He'd keep the house and buy out my share at a valuation that couldn't possibly be right. He'd keep his retirement account untouched. The section on joint savings had a line drawn straight through it, with a note in the margin: *Exhausted by medical expenses.*

"Medical expenses," I said. "My IVF was paid out of that account for four years. Every cycle. Now he's calling it empty like I drained it."

"Keep going," Marissa said.

Page four was worse. *Joint Public Statement.* A paragraph we'd both sign and share with friends, family, and his colleagues at the hospital.

*After years of struggling with infertility, Alex and Natalie have mutually and amicably decided to part ways. The strain of long-term fertility challenges has taken a toll, and we ask for privacy during this time.*

I read it twice. Then I flipped through the rest, looking for one thing.

"There's nothing about the twenty-eight thousand."

"No." Marissa uncapped a red pen. "There isn't."

"And this." I pointed to the last highlighted clause. "Wife agrees to waive any objection to Husband's withdrawal of consent regarding the use of cryopreserved embryos."

I put the pages down before I crumpled them.

"He gets his new girlfriend, keeps the money, and expects me to sign a statement blaming my body?"

Marissa drew a thick red line through the joint statement. Then another through the waiver.

"He's writing the story before anyone else gets to," she said. "If you sign this, everyone you know hears that your marriage ended because you couldn't get pregnant. Not because he spent your savings on another woman's spa package."

That was exactly it. He'd decided I was the reason, and he wanted my signature on it.

My phone buzzed against the desk. An email from Lakeshore Fertility Center. *Re: Account Notice — Carter, Storage Inquiry.*

I opened it, and the room seemed to tilt.

"Natalie?"

I turned the screen toward her. "Dr. Ortega's office. She said she'd flag anything new." My voice thinned out. "Alex called them Friday. He asked about the procedure for ending cryostorage after a divorce is finalized."

Friday. The day before he stood on that stage and toasted to second chances.

Marissa read it twice, her mouth tight. "He asked. That's all he can do right now."

"He wants them gone."

"What he wants doesn't decide this." She pulled the storage agreement from my folder and flipped to section nine. "Final disposition has to follow this contract and state law. If there's a dispute, and there is, he doesn't get to make a phone call and have them destroyed. I'll send the clinic formal written notice today that this is contested. Nothing happens to those embryos without a court or a signed agreement from both of you."

I nodded. I didn't trust my voice yet.

From the back of my folder, I took out the printout I'd made last night. The two storage IDs, *LFC-2207-A* and *LFC-2207-B*. Paper-clipped behind it was the embryo photo the lab had given us after retrieval, two grainy gray circles under a microscope.

I used to keep that photo on the fridge. I'd stare at it while the coffee brewed and wonder whose nose they'd get. Whether they'd have Alex's dimples or my stubborn chin. Whether one would be a girl.

My thumb kept rubbing the edge of the photo until the corner went soft.

"He can refuse another transfer," I said quietly. "He cannot turn these embryos into a bargaining chip."

Marissa wrote something in red and underlined it. "Then that's what we'll make sure of."

I was halfway down the front steps of the building when my phone rang. The flat, default chime.

I almost didn't answer. Then I did.

"What the hell, Natalie?" Alex didn't say hello. "The clinic just called me. Some lawyer contacted them about a dispute. You sent a lawyer after me?"

"I hired an attorney. Yes."

"Over what? A few frozen cells?" Traffic roared somewhere behind him. "You're humiliating me with my colleagues. Dr. Ortega practically interrogated me."

I stopped on the last step. Pigeons scattered across the plaza.

He hadn't asked why I wanted a divorce. Not once.

"From now on, anything legal goes through Marissa Cole," I said. "Have your lawyer call her."

"Oh, come on. Don't do the cold thing." He let out a short laugh. "Honestly, there's no point fighting over the embryos anymore. I don't need them."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I already have a real child on the way."

The traffic noise kept going. I didn't move.

Then, very close to his phone, a woman's voice, soft and sleepy. "Alex? Is that her?"

Victoria.

My phone vibrated against my ear. Then again. I pulled it away and looked at the screen.

He'd sent a photo.

A lab report on clinic letterhead. *Quantitative hCG, Serum. Result: Positive.* And at the top, printed clearly in the patient field: *HALE, VICTORIA.*

I read her name three times.

Six rounds. Four years. My mother's pearls. Hundreds of needles in my stomach. Every negative test I'd sobbed over on the bathroom floor while he rubbed my back and promised me it didn't matter.

Eight years, and the whole thing had been a joke he was only now letting me hear the punchline to.

His voice came small and tinny from the speaker. I lifted the phone back to my ear.

"Did you get it?" he asked. He sounded almost proud.

I couldn't make a sound.

"Victoria is pregnant, Natalie. With my baby. She gave me what you couldn't."