Chapter 2

I was on the steps of San Francisco City Hall at 7:42 a.m., forty-eight minutes before the recorder's office opened.

I hadn't slept. I sat on the cold marble in yesterday's jeans with my laptop bag in my lap and the confirmation email on my phone, and I watched the fog lift off the Civic Center like a curtain rising.

At 8:30, a clerk with silver braids unlocked the door. She looked at my face and didn't ask questions.

"I need a certified copy of my marriage certificate," I said. "Wren Ellery and Grayson Hale."

She typed. The computer hummed. I counted the seconds. Grayson had sounded so sure, and sure was the thing he did best. Maybe the filing had bounced. Maybe I'd dreamed the whole thing.

"Here we go," she said. "Recorded October ninth, three years ago. Hale, Grayson Alexander, and Ellery, Wren June." She glanced up. "You want the certified copy or the abstract?"

"Certified," I said. My voice cracked. "Please."

The printer warmed up. She pressed the raised county seal into the corner and slid it into a manila envelope.

"Twenty-eight dollars, hon."

It was the cheapest weapon anyone has ever bought.

I held the envelope in both hands on the steps outside and let myself shake for exactly one minute. Then I called the clinic.

The doctor confirmed what the test had told me: seven weeks. On the ultrasound screen a tiny flicker pulsed like a star.

"Strong heartbeat," she said. "Any concerns?"

I thought of the counter edge and the bruise blooming purple on my hip.

"No," I lied. "No concerns."

When I got back to the apartment, my key didn't turn. I tried again, and the brass slot refused me.

He had changed the locks.

My phone buzzed. My credit card had been declined at the pharmacy. Then a second alert came in: Your authorized user access to account ending 4471 has been removed.

Every account was in his name. I had made sure of that years ago, because he said investors liked a "clean founder profile." I'd thought it was romantic, giving him everything.

Then a message arrived from an account I didn't follow.

@sloanewhitmore: Hi! Grayson told me about you. I know it's hard when an assistant gets attached to her boss. Your things are in a box with the doorman. Please don't contact him again. Best of luck. 💛

His assistant. I had spent three years of my life writing his code, cooking his dinners, and holding his hand through four funding rounds, and to her I was his assistant.

I picked up the box from the doorman. Inside were two sweaters, a phone charger, and my mother's recipe binder with coffee spilled across the cover. Not my laptop. Not my journal. Not the framed photo from our wedding day.

He had kept the things that could prove I existed and thrown away the rest.

I sat in my car on a side street in SoMa and searched for the name I had heard Grayson curse at dinner parties: the most terrifying divorce attorney in California.

Mara Quinn answered her own phone on the second ring.

"Talk fast," she said. "I bill in six-minute increments."

So I talked fast. The courthouse, the license I filed myself, my mother's house money, the code I wrote, the IPO. Grayson telling me we were never married, and the ring on Sloane Whitmore's finger.

When I finished, the line was silent for so long I thought she'd hung up.

"Mrs. Hale," Mara said slowly. "Did your husband file a registration statement with the SEC?"

"The S-1? Last month. Why?"

"Because if that certificate is real, you weren't his girlfriend. You were his wife, in a community property state, during the entire life of the company." I heard her chair creak. "You don't own half his furniture, sweetheart. You own half his founder shares."

My mouth went dry.

"How much is that?"

"At the projected IPO price?" Paper rustled. "Roughly two hundred and forty million dollars."