My Husband Served Divorce Papers After I Gave Birth

The pitch meeting was scheduled for two o'clock.

At one fifty-nine, the freight elevator opened and Kasen Marshall stepped into the Apex One reception area.

Not one fifty-eight. Not two-oh-one. One fifty-nine, which told me he had been in the building for at least five minutes, waiting until the right moment to come up. That was the first thing I noticed.

The second was that he didn't look around the room the way most people did on a first visit — taking inventory, calculating, comparing it against some imagined version they'd already constructed. He just looked at me, nodded once, and said, "Ms. Thomas. Thank you for the time."

I shook his hand and led him to the conference table by the windows.

He was carrying a single folder. No laptop, no deck, no tablet propped at an angle designed to impress. He set the folder down and didn't open it.

I poured two glasses of water and sat across from him.

"Three questions," he said. "Then I'll tell you what I'm thinking."

I said nothing. I waited.

"Your top six bookings this quarter — were they relationship-driven or structure-driven? Meaning, would those clients have followed you specifically, or would they have gone to whoever offered the best contract?"

I looked at him for a moment. It was a good question. Most investors who came through my door wanted to talk about vision, momentum, the market gap. They wanted to feel something. Kasen Marshall wanted to understand the bones.

"Relationship-driven," I said. "Every one. Which is a liability if I get hit by a cab tomorrow, and an asset if I don't. I'm building the structure now to convert the relationship capital into something replicable. Diana Marsh is leading that transition on the booking floor."

He wrote one word in the margin of a page in his folder. I didn't try to read it.

"Second question. Maison Verre — six-figure seasonal contract. How are you protecting the renewal?"

"Exclusive first-look clause in the booking agreement. Hélène sees our new faces thirty days before they go to market. She gets priority, she stays loyal, and she feels like a partner instead of a client." I paused. "She also gets a handwritten note every season. That part isn't in the contract."

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The suggestion of one.

"Third question." He leaned back slightly. "What does Apex One look like in five years if everything goes right?"

I didn't hesitate. "NYC's primary agency for talent with actual longevity. Not the flashiest roster in the room — the most durable one. Careers that last a decade, not eighteen months. Clients who come back because the models we place never embarrass them." I folded my hands on the table. "The agency that the best people in this industry trust, which means editors, buyers, and talent. All three. At the same time."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he opened the folder, turned it around, and slid it across the table to me.

The terms were on one page. Clean, structured, generous without being reckless. A Series A figure that gave me operational runway without the equity dilution that would have made it feel like a leash. I read it through twice, which took about ninety seconds.

"I'm not going to ask what changed your mind after the WWD item," I said.

"Good," he said. "Because it wasn't the WWD item."

I looked up.

"I've been watching the Jadewood departures for four months," he said. "Diana Marsh's exit was the tell. That's not an employee leaving. That's the institutional memory of a company walking out the door. I wanted to see where it walked to." He glanced at the windows, then back at me. "It walked here."

I signed the term sheet at two forty-three.

He stood, picked up his folder, and shook my hand again. His grip was firm and brief and didn't linger. At the elevator, he turned back once.

"You'll want a follow-up meeting in three weeks," he said. "I have a client in the luxury retail space who's been looking for an agency with exactly your renewal structure. I'll make the introduction if you want it."

"Three weeks," I said.

He nodded and stepped into the elevator.

I stood by the conference table for a moment after the doors closed, the signed term sheet still in my hand, and felt something I hadn't felt in months — the particular, quiet satisfaction of a conversation that had cost me nothing and given me exactly what I needed.

I went to check on Thomas.

---

The gala was in Soho, a converted gallery space on West Broadway, hosted by a luxury watch brand that wanted to be seen adjacent to fashion without actually being in it. I arrived with four of our models and Diana, who wore black and never stopped scanning the room.

I wore ivory. Simple cut, no ornamentation. The kind of dress that makes other people look overdressed.

The room was full within the hour — buyers, editors, photographers, the usual current of industry faces I had known for years. Three separate people stopped me before I'd reached the bar to talk about the Maison Verre booking. I kept the conversations brief and warm and moved on.

I saw Waylon across the room at forty minutes in.

He was standing near the east wall with Mariana. My first thought, which arrived before I could shape it into anything more considered, was: he looks like a man who has been ill and doesn't know it yet. Twenty pounds, at least. His jacket fit the way clothes fit when a body has quietly rearranged itself without the owner's permission. His collar looked loose. He was holding a glass of something he wasn't drinking.

Mariana's hand rested on her stomach. Visibly, deliberately, with the practiced ease of a woman who had decided that stomach was a statement.

I turned back to the conversation I was having with the WWD editor — a woman named Petra who had been trying to get me to agree to a full interview for the past two months — and let the room settle around me the way it always did.

I felt her before I saw her.

That particular quality of approach — too deliberate, too direct, the specific trajectory of someone crossing a room with a destination in mind.

Mariana stopped in front of me. Her hand stayed on her stomach. Her smile was a warm, wide thing, the kind that takes practice.

"Regina." She let my name sit for a beat, like a gift she was presenting. "Apex One. Look at you. Such a surprising little run you've had." Her eyes moved over me once, quickly. "You look well."

Petra had gone very still beside me.

I smiled. Full and easy and entirely without effort.

"Mariana. Congratulations." My eyes dropped to her hand on her stomach, then back up, warm and unreadable. "You must be so happy."

A half-second where her smile held a beat too long.

I turned to Petra. "I'm sorry — you were asking about the Maison Verre renewal structure?"

Petra, who had covered this industry for fifteen years and knew a door closing when she heard it, picked the thread back up immediately.

I didn't watch Mariana leave. I didn't need to. I could feel the room's attention the way you feel a current shift — a subtle, unmistakable reorientation, like a whole space quietly deciding where the center was.

Sometime later, Diana appeared at my elbow with two glasses of sparkling water and said nothing. She handed me one. I took it.

Across the room, Waylon was still standing by the east wall. He wasn't talking to anyone. His glass was still full. He was looking in my direction with an expression I didn't try to interpret, and I didn't hold his gaze long enough to give him the chance to interpret mine.

I turned back to Petra.

"After Fashion Week," I told her. "Come see me after Fashion Week."