Emma: You think money fixes everything, don't you?
Julian: No! I don't care about the money! The board just suspended me as CEO anyway. I lost the company, Emma.
Emma looked at him, seeing the water dripping from his ruined suit and the genuine pain in his blue eyes. But she didn't step forward.
Emma: You lost a job, Julian. I spent nine years working eighteen hours a day, sleeping on a couch, worrying if I could afford my daughter's inhaler.
Julian: I want to take care of both of you now! I have personal savings, I have a trust fund—
Emma: We don't want your trust fund, Julian. We want safety. And you are not safe.
Julian: I will go to therapy! I will do anger management! I'll do whatever it takes to prove to you that I can change!
Lily huddled on the wooden bench, pulling her thin sweater around her shoulders as she watched her parents speak in the rain.
Lily: Mommy... the bus is coming.
The bright yellow headlights of the city bus illuminated the dark street, its heavy brakes squealing as it pulled up to the curb.
Julian: Emma, please... don't get on that bus. Come back to the house. I'll sleep in the guest wing. You can have the whole master suite.
Emma: I'm not going back to a place where my daughter was slapped across the face.
Julian: Then where are you going?
Emma: To a small two-bedroom apartment that I paid for with my own hard-earned money. A place where nobody gets hurt.
Emma lifted Lily into her arms, stepping onto the metal stairs of the bus.
Julian: Can I at least visit her? Can I see my daughter?
Emma paused at the top of the stairs, looking down at the broken, soaked billionaire standing on the wet pavement.
Emma: Get a lawyer, Julian. Establish legal paternity through the courts. If a judge says you're fit to see her under supervised visits, I won't stop you.
Julian: Supervised visits?
Emma: You struck her tonight, Julian. You don't get to be a real dad until you earn her trust back step by step.
The pneumatic doors of the bus hissed shut, sealing Julian out. He stood frozen in the rain, watching through the glass window as the bus pulled away, carrying his daughter down the dark avenue.
He sank to his knees on the wet sidewalk, burying his face in his hands as the realization of his actions washed over him.
He had spent nine years chasing wealth and status, living under his mother's thumb, only to lose the two most precious things in the world in a single three-second moment of rage.