“She needs to sign it before she goes home. After that, she’ll have her lawyers around her.”
Thomas had replied:
“She’s exhausted. She won’t last much longer.”
Further :
“If she refuses for the sake of the children, people will say she’s been unstable since birth. It has to be believable.”
The judge reread the sentence.
Thomas stared at the table.
Juliette, for her part, no longer looked at the messages.
She was looking at her husband.
For years, she had believed that her main weakness was her inability to stand up to Geneviève.
She finally understood something more painful.
Thomas hadn’t just let his mother decide.
He had learned to hide behind her.
When cruelty demanded a signature, he signed it.
When she demanded a sentence, he let her speak.
When she demanded that Juliette be smeared, he simply replied: “It has to be believable.”
The judge rejected Thomas’s urgent request to immediately establish the twins’ habitual residence with him.
Parental authority remained exercised by both parents.
A temporary arrangement was put in place, taking into account the age of the children, mixed feeding, medical follow-up and Juliette’s situation.
The meetings with Thomas would begin gradually.
Regarding Geneviève, the judge obviously did not grant her any automatic rights over the infants and noted that the exchanges produced justified, for the time being, great caution.
In the corridor, Geneviève waited for Sarah to move a few meters away.
Then she approached.
— You had prepared all of this.
Juliette stopped.
— Non.
— Don’t play innocent. The audit. The clauses. The lawyers. You were waiting for your moment.
Juliette looked at her for a long time.
Years ago, that look would have intimidated her.
Geneviève had a knack for making people feel they were too noisy, too poor, too sensitive, or too ordinary to belong to her world.
This time, Juliette felt nothing.
Just immense fatigue.
— I launched the audit because I saw money leaving the company.
— You were spying on my son.
— I was protecting an investment of €240,000,000.
Geneviève pressed her lips together.
— You destroyed this family for an affair.
Juliette shook her head.
— The relationship hurt me. It’s not what destroyed you.
Thomas had just left the room.
He heard the rest.
— It’s the fake contracts. The transfers. The lies. And your idea that a woman barely out of the operating room could be bought and then erased.
Geneviève approached again.
— Without us, you would be nobody.
Thomas closed his eyes.
Juliette had already heard that phrase.
At dinner parties.
During a vacation.
The day she left her office.
Always with a smile.
Still in the form of a joke.
This time, she answered.
— Without my father, your group probably wouldn’t have survived 2022.
Geneviève is whitening.
Juliette continued on her way.
Thomas followed her to the glass doors.
— Juliette.
She stopped without turning around.
– I’m sorry.
She remained motionless for a few seconds.
Then she turned around.
His eyes were red.
“For Maud?” she asked.
— For everything.
— “Everything” is convenient.
He lowered his head.
— I didn’t think my mother would go that far.
Juliette almost felt like laughing.
Not because it was funny.
Because she had heard that phrase for 6 years.
“I didn’t think she would say that.”
“I didn’t think she would do that to you.”
“I didn’t think she would go this far.”
Juliette moved close enough so that only he could hear.
— Your mother went exactly as far as you allowed her to go.
Thomas did not reply.
This time, she left.
The following weeks were less spectacular than Geneviève had imagined and much more destructive.
The external audit confirmed €6,800,000 in questionable payments to several entities directly or indirectly linked to Laurent Perrin.
Not all of them were fraudulent.
Some of them corresponded to genuine services.
Others were overvalued.
Several could not be seriously justified.
The board provided the necessary information to the group’s lawyers and initiated reimbursement proceedings.
Maud disappeared almost immediately from Thomas’s life.
Not because she had suddenly discovered a conscience.
Because from the moment her brother’s name appeared in the audit, their relationship ceased to be a social scandal and became a legal risk.
Thomas remains suspended.
Three administrators requested his definitive resignation.
Geneviève attempted to organize a revolt among the former shareholders.
She phoned cousins, former associates of her deceased husband, and investors who once owed her favors.
But numbers were harder to intimidate than people.
At the following meeting, the Morel holding company used its 52% voting rights to appoint a general manager from outside the family and create a committee in charge of operations with related parties.
Juliette did not occupy any office.
She did not ask for her name to appear on the facade.
She didn’t even attend the reception organized for the new management.
Sarah asked him why.
Juliette watched the twins sleeping in their stroller.
— Because I don’t want their throne. I want them to stop using the company as a family business.
The divorce, however, took months.
There was no miraculous check for €18,000,000.
The clinic’s protocol never became the weapon that Geneviève had envisioned.
The lawyers established each party’s assets, distinguished personal property from jointly owned assets, and negotiated what could be negotiated.
For the children, each decision was made separately.
Thomas obtained a gradual right of visitation, then longer periods of visitation as the twins grew up.
Juliette never tried to cut them off from their father.
She only demanded that he come without Geneviève during the period stipulated by the provisional agreements.
At first, Thomas protested.
Then he stopped.
One afternoon, several months after the birth, he arrived alone to collect the children.
He remained on the doorstep, his hands in his pockets.
— My mother says you want to punish her.
Juliette fastened one of the boys’ coats.
— Your mother still thinks everything is about her.
Thomas watched his son.
