CHAPTER THREE
Martin Lewis's office didn't look like the office of a man who had ended more Miami marriages than anyone else in the state.
No dark wood, no framed verdicts, nothing that announced itself.
Just clean light, a view of the bay, and an older man in a linen shirt who stood when Camille walked in and said, "You look like hell, but you're still the most put-together woman I've seen all week," which was, from Martin, a genuine compliment.
She'd called him from the car on the way over, unable to wait until she was alone to say the words out loud for the first time. He'd cleared his morning without asking a single question beyond her name, which told her more about the man than the framed nothing on his walls ever could.
She remembered him from years ago, guiding a sponsor's wife through the ugliest divorce Miami's sports world had seen in a decade, and remembered thinking that she was glad she'd never need him herself.
"I need a divorce lawyer," Camille said, sitting before he could offer her the chair. "I think you're the only one who'll actually be on my side instead of the marriage's."
"There's no such thing as being on the marriage's side. There's just being on the side of whoever pays the least attention." He sat back down, folding his hands. "Tell me."
She told him. All of it, in the same flat, precise voice she'd used with Adrian, because she'd discovered that voice was the only one that let her get through the story without falling apart partway through.
The anklet on the terrace. The lingerie in the owner's suite. She won't know how to stop. She'll take whatever I give her. The empty tissue paper in the keepsake box. The recording sitting in her phone practically radioactive.
Martin didn't interrupt once. When she finished, he was quiet for a moment, watching her with an expression of cool, working attention.
"First," he said, "I'm sorry. Genuinely. Twenty-two years deserve better than a hallway and a phone recording." He let that sit. "Second. Has he asked you to sign anything recently? Anything at all. Documents, NDAs, franchise paperwork, foundation restructuring, anything with your name on a line?"
"There's been talk about restructuring the Foundation's board before the birthday. And he mentioned a proposed sale of additional ownership shares to a group out of Charlotte."
"Sign nothing." Martin said it like a doctor delivering the one instruction that actually mattered.
"Not a card, not a form, not a birthday guest list if it has legal language buried in it.
Grant is about to discover that Camille Holloway is not a wife with a joint checking account.
You own a meaningful minority stake in the Tempests through the original holding company, dating back to when you two put the deal together. Do you understand what that means?"
"I know I have shares."
"You have consent rights." Martin leaned forward.
"The arena redevelopment Grant's been pushing through the league requires shareholder approval above a threshold.
Any sale of additional ownership shares, say, to a group out of Charlotte, requires it too.
Changes to the Foundation's governance, if your name is still on the original charter as a founding trustee, which I'd bet it is, require your consent.
And any commercial use of your image in that documentary he's producing needs a release you have not yet signed. "
For the first time since she'd walked into the owner's suite, Camille felt steady. Martin had handed her a floor to stand on. She could feel it taking her weight.
"He doesn't think I know any of that," she said slowly.
"He's spent twenty-two years telling himself, and everyone around him, that he built the Tempests alone.
" Martin's voice had gone dry. "Men like Grant Holloway believe their own documentaries.
It's a professional hazard of being surrounded by people paid to agree with you.
He genuinely does not remember that you're an owner, Camille.
He remembers you as a wife who happens to attend games. "
"So what do I do?"
"Nothing, for now, which I understand is not what you want to hear.
" He held up a hand before she could argue.
"You don't confront him. You don't threaten him.
You don't hire investigators to chase down every dinner he's expensed to a shell company, because that's a six-month process and you don't have six months, and frankly, you don't need it.
You already have the one piece of evidence that actually matters—him, on tape, telling another woman exactly what he plans to do to you. Everything else is decoration."
"He wants me to host his fiftieth birthday party. Smile for the cameras. Find out about the divorce afterward, quietly, so it doesn't touch the brand."
"I heard." Martin's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "What do you want to do?"
Camille had asked herself that question in the dark at four in the morning, sitting on the edge of a bed with her ring on the nightstand. She'd arrived at an answer that surprised her with how little doubt it carried.
"I want him to have his party," she said. "Every camera he asked for. Every sponsor, every league official, every reporter I can get credentialed. I already expanded the guest list myself, told him it was for optics. He thinks it was my idea of loyalty."
Martin's eyebrows rose, the closest he came to visible admiration. "And what happens at this party?"
"I haven't decided the mechanics yet. But I want the room full when it happens. I want it recorded by people who aren't mine to control, so he can't have it quietly deleted. I want Brielle standing right where she's decided to stand—next to him, in front of everyone, thinking she's won."
Camille's voice didn't rise, didn't shake.
If anything it had gone quieter, and steadier, the way a held breath goes quiet right before it's finally released.
"I want him to lose the fiftieth birthday the way he's going to lose the marriage.
In public, and permanently, with no version of the story left for him to control. "
Martin studied her for a long moment. What settled over his face was close to respect.
"All right," he said. "Then let's make sure that when the room turns on him, the law turns with it.
Preserve that recording somewhere I control it, not just on your phone.
Gather your ownership documents. I'll send a list. And Camille—" He waited until she met his eyes fully.
"Whatever happens at that party, you let it happen to him.
Don't let him turn it into something that happened to you.
There's a difference, and juries, boards, and gossip columns all understand it instinctively, even when the people living it don't."
Camille thought of the anklet catching light on another ankle. Of tissue paper folded around an absence. Of a recording of her husband's voice, amused and unhurried, dismantling twenty-two years like a man reading a weather report.
"I understand the difference," she said. "I've spent two decades making sure nothing that happens in that family looks like it's happening to anyone. I'm very good at managing a narrative, Martin. I just haven't used it for myself before."
"Nine days," Martin said. "Can you hold the line that long?"
Camille stood, straightened the jacket she'd chosen that morning with more care than she'd admit to, and looked out at the bay glittering as it had from Grant's terrace the night this had all started.
Strange, that the water still sparkled, that the palms still moved in the same lazy wind, that the whole indifferent gorgeousness of Miami kept carrying on as if nothing underneath it had shifted.
"I held it for twenty-two years," she said. "Nine more days is nothing."
She was almost at the door when Martin spoke again, quieter this time.
"Camille." He waited for her to turn. "For what it's worth—the wife who believed in him, and gave up her own name to it, and the woman who just sat in my office and planned the dismantling of a billionaire's fiftieth birthday with the calm of someone reading a menu, are not different people.
You didn't become capable of this today.
You were always capable of it. You just spent two decades pointing it at someone else's ambition instead of your own life. "
Camille held onto that for a moment, surprised by how much it cost her not to cry again, this time for an entirely different reason.
"Send me the document list," she said, and let herself out into the bright, indifferent Miami morning, already thinking nine days ahead, to a room full of cameras and a man who had no idea what was coming.