Maddie was eventually forced by the aggressive court system to meet Vance face-to-face for a highly mandatory, closed-door mediation session.

They sat silently at opposite ends of a massively long, freezing cold mahogany conference table inside a deeply neutral, heavily guarded law office.

Vance looked completely exhausted and shattered; his normally impeccable, expensive suit was deeply wrinkled, and the arrogant, powerful spark was entirely gone from his eyes.

The court-appointed mediator asked Vance in a calm voice to clearly state his primary, overarching goal for these tense legal proceedings.

Vance looked directly into Maddie's tired eyes and softly said that he just wanted a chance to know his beautiful children.

He desperately promised to provide them with the absolute best private schools, massive trust funds, and the highest level of security in the world.

Maddie suddenly slammed her small hands flat on the wooden table, the loud crack instantly silencing everyone in the entire room.

She angrily asked him if his massive pile of money was going to wake up at three in the morning to hold them when they had a terrifying fever.

She asked him with venom in her voice if a cold trust fund was going to hold her shaking hand while the doctors desperately tried to stop her from bleeding to death.

Maddie forcefully made him sit there and listen to the absolute, unvarnished horror of her terrifying premature labor in a charity hospital.

She graphically described the blinding, tearing physical pain, the terrifying, frantic beeping of the failing heart monitors, and the devastating sight of the empty chair right next to her bed.

She told him exactly how she had begged and pleaded with the sympathetic nurses to call his private office line just one more time.

She vividly described the exact, soul-crushing moment she finally realized she was entirely, utterly alone in the world with two premature babies fighting for their lives.

Vance sat completely frozen in his expensive leather chair, all the color completely drained from his horrified, devastated face.

The slick, perfectly polished, and impenetrable armor he had proudly worn for years finally cracked down the middle and shattered into dust.

He finally realized with sickening clarity that his massive, unimaginable wealth absolutely could not buy a time machine.

He could never, ever undo the horrific agony and sheer terror he had casually and selfishly inflicted on the only woman he had ever truly loved.

Tears, completely hot, foreign, and deeply unfamiliar, finally spilled heavily over Vance’s eyelashes and rolled slowly down his pale cheeks.

He looked across the table at Maddie, his voice completely cracking into a desperate, pathetic, and broken whisper.

He told her that he was a miserable coward, and he was so incredibly, profoundly sorry for breaking her.

For the very first time in three long years, Maddie finally saw the vulnerable, human man she had actually married.

But a single, tearful apology was absolutely not enough to magically erase the deep, permanent scars he had left on her soul.