“But Scott is pushing me to sign,” I said, looking down at my phone. “He’s texting me right now.”

Jerome leaned back in his leather chair, locking his fingers together.

“Then you give him exactly what he expects to see,” Jerome said.

“Play the victim, Avery.”

“Act devastated. Let him think you are too broken to fight.”

“If he thinks you’ve surrendered, he will get careless.”

“He will stop trying to hide Kayla.”

“He might even start bragging.”

I looked down at the glowing screen of my phone.

The gray dots in our text thread had disappeared, but Scott’s last message was still staring at me.

“I can do that,” I said.

I unlocked the phone and opened our chat.

“I don’t know how I’m going to survive this,” I typed, my fingers trembling on purpose.

“I’m too weak to even look at the papers right now.”

“Please give me a few days to process this.”

I pressed send.

“Perfect,” Jerome said, watching me.

“Now we wait for his reaction.”

We left Jerome’s office thirty minutes later.