After 28 Lockouts, I Finally Locked Him Out Chapter 02

After 28 Lockouts, I Finally Locked Him Out Chapter 02

Julian’s face hardened.

“Are you really this jealous?” He frowned. “Clara, when are you going to grow up? Eleanor is Leo’s mother. She’s involved for his sake.”

I almost laughed.

“For Leo’s sake?” I stared at him. “Then why did I have to get Eleanor’s approval for Maya’s orthodontist bills? Was that for Leo’s sake, too?”

“Julian, do you even get it? Every time you lock me out, I have to go crawling to your ex-wife and your son. I have to humiliate myself just to get back to doing my job.”

He didn’t answer. His lips pressed into a thin, hard line.

Just then, ragged breathing came from the doorway.

Maya stood there in her pajamas, her face pale, her chest heaving.

“Dad… don’t be mad at Mom…” She was gasping, her words coming in fragments. “It’s my fault… I won’t go to summer camp… I’ll write the email right now and say I’m not going…”

“See? Here we go again.”

In the corner, Leo held up his phone as if recording.

“She does this every time. It’s so pathetic.”

Julian glanced at me, then at Maya. There wasn’t a flicker of concern on his face.

“Clara, look what you’ve taught her. Now she’s learned to use tears and asthma to manipulate her own father?”

He didn’t ask Maya if she was all right.

He didn’t go to her, didn’t hug her.

My mind flashed back to last winter.

Leo had scraped his knee snowboarding in Aspen—just a bit of broken skin—and Julian had immediately cut a London meeting short and flown a private jet back to put him in Boston’s best private hospital.

But two years ago, Maya had been chasing our puppy when she fell down the stairs, hitting her forehead on the corner of a table. Blood streamed down her face.

I held her in the emergency room alone and waited for three hours.

She got four stitches.

When Julian finally called, his voice was impatient.

“Are you still not done? The dinner is about to start, Clara. I can’t show up alone.”

Later, he told me I had overreacted and disrupted his schedule.

The memory spurred me forward, and I pulled Maya into my arms.

“Baby, it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Maya trembled as she cried, her little face red from holding back her sobs.

Julian watched us, leaning back in his chair as if observing a tedious performance.

“Take her back to her room. When she’s calm, and you’re calm, you can come out and organize the application materials for Leo’s school sponsorship.”

I didn’t answer.

I just carried Maya out of the room.

The moment the door clicked shut, I heard Leo say, “Dad, she doesn’t actually think this will make you give in, does she? My mom has always said she’s great at putting on a show.”

Julian’s voice was sharp with irritation.

“Just let her be. Leave her alone for a while.”

A moment later, the chime of a video conference connecting sounded from inside.

First came Leo’s voice.

“Grandma, that woman is losing it again.”

Then Julian’s mother spoke, her prim tone laced with cruelty.

“Julian, I told you long ago. She’s too emotional. She isn’t suited to have any oversight of the family assets. People who don’t come from our world simply can’t handle these things.”

Julian’s father added coldly, “When Eleanor was here, at least the family ran more smoothly.”

Then came Eleanor, her voice gentle, forever the reasonable one.

“Don’t say that. Clara may just be under too much pressure. Julian, perhaps you shouldn’t have given her such a heavy responsibility in the first place. She didn’t grow up in your world.”

Finally, Mr. Davison, the family lawyer, said, “Julian, if the co-manager’s current emotional state is affecting her judgment, then for the security of the trust, we can indeed initiate a temporary evaluation.”

Those people—my husband, his parents, his ex-wife, and their lawyer—were all on a call, defining me as someone who needed to be evaluated.

I stood in the hallway, holding Maya, my back pressed against the wall.

I thought of three years ago, when the charitable foundation under Julian’s father’s name nearly cratered after a failed investment.

I had spent two months rebuilding the hedging plan, clawing the fund back into positive returns.

Yet in their eyes, I was still just an unstable outsider.

Eleanor, a woman divorced from him for six years, was still treated as one of their own.

Maya shifted in my arms and gently tugged my sleeve.

“Mom, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have wanted to go to that summer camp.”

I lowered my head and looked at her.

She was only eight, yet she had already learned to read every face in this family. She had already learned to feel guilty for wanting something she was entitled to.

I held her tighter.

In that moment, I made my decision.

“Maya,” I said, pressing my forehead to hers, “Mommy is going to take you away from here, okay?”

She lifted her eyes to me.

“Where?”

“Somewhere you can sign up for any summer camp you want.”

She thought for a moment, then asked, “Is Dad coming too?”

I didn’t answer directly.

“Do you want him to?”

She shook her head and buried her face in my shoulder.

“Dad only protects Leo,” she said. “He doesn’t like me.”

With those words, the last flicker of hope inside me died.

“Okay.” I held her. “Then we don’t need Dad. We’ll go, just the two of us.”