The injunction landed quietly.
No press release.
No public filing anyone outside a narrow legal circle would notice.
But Keith noticed.
He stood in his study, jacket discarded, tie loosened, reading the notice again as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less damning.
Prohibition of further inquiry into protected medical matters.
Violation subject to immediate legal action.
Medical.
The word pulsed.
He exhaled slowly, fingers pressing into the edge of the desk.
So it was real.
Not confirmed—but real enough that Jasmine had lawyers willing to burn bridges to protect it.
And she hadn't warned him.
Jasmine spent the morning deliberately.
She walked the park near her apartment, letting sunlight warm her face. Children played near the swings. A woman laughed into her phone. Life, unremarkable and precious, continued around her.
She liked that.
Normalcy was its own kind of rebellion.
Her phone remained silent—not because Keith wasn't calling, but because she had rerouted everything through counsel.
Distance wasn't absence.
It was insulation.
By noon, Keith was on his second meeting and his third unanswered question.
"If this becomes public," a board advisor said carefully, "we need to be prepared."
Prepared for what? Keith almost snapped.
But he didn't.
Instead, he asked, "Prepared how?"
The advisor hesitated. "For narratives we don't control."
Keith leaned back.
That was the problem.
Every narrative he'd built—every assumption about loyalty, legacy, leverage—was beginning to fray.
And the thread all of them pulled on led back to Jasmine.
That evening, Jasmine received a message from her lawyer.
He's agitated. Not reckless yet—but close.
Jasmine typed back.
Let him feel it.
Then she closed her laptop and cooked dinner, slow and careful, the way the doctor had advised. She ate at the small table, window open, breeze carrying the scent of rain.
Her hand rested over her abdomen, protective but calm.
"You're doing fine," she murmured. "So am I."
At exactly 9:47 p.m., Keith broke.
He used a number she hadn't blocked.
"Jasmine," he said the moment she answered. His voice was low, controlled, but something beneath it strained. "We need to talk."
She didn't speak.
Silence filled the line.
"I'm not asking as your ex-husband," he continued. "I'm asking as someone who—who deserves to know if there's something that affects me."
There it was.
Deserve.
Jasmine finally replied. Her voice was even. "What affects you is your business. What affects me is mine."
"You're being deliberately opaque," Keith said.
"No," she corrected gently. "I'm being consistent."
A beat.
Then, quieter: "Is it mine?"
The question landed heavy, exposed.
Jasmine closed her eyes.
Not yet, she thought.
Out loud, she said only this:
"You should be asking yourself why you think that question belongs to you."
She ended the call.
Keith stood frozen, phone still at his ear long after the line went dead.
For the first time in his life, he had asked a question that mattered.
And received no answer at all.
Across the city, Jasmine sat in the dim light of her apartment, breathing slow and steady.
Silence, she knew now, was no longer absence.
It was power.
And it was speaking louder than anything she could say.