MY HUSBAND SMASHED OUR WEDDING PORTRAIT AND DECLARED THAT A WIFE NEEDS TO BE BROKEN TO LEARN OBEDIENCE—THEN I LOOKED HIM IN THE EYE AND SAID, “THEN I GUESS THE GLOVES ARE COMING OFF.”

The house was perfectly quiet by 2:00 AM. I had a cleaning crew out by 3:00 to sweep away the broken glass and scrub the wine from the hardwood. By the time the sun rose over the Seattle skyline, it was as if Julian Vance had never existed in this space.

But I knew men like Julian. The initial shock of defeat would quickly curdle into a desperate need for revenge.

I sat at my glass desk in my home office, sipping black coffee. My phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number, but I recognized Eleanor’s venomous syntax immediately: You ruined my son’s reputation. You’ll pay for this, you barren, cold witch. We’re taking half of everything you own.

I didn’t block the number. Instead, I took a screenshot and filed it into a digital folder labeled Evidence: VANCE.

At 9:00 AM, my lawyer, a shark of a woman named Diane, walked into my office. “He’s out on bail. Eleanor mortgaged her condo to cover it.”

“Predictable,” I replied, pulling up Julian’s financial background on my dual monitors. “They’re going to try to enforce the marriage in civil court while fighting the criminal charges. They want a settlement to go away.”

Diane smiled, a predatory gleam in her eyes. “They signed the prenup. It has a morality clause and a fraud stipulation.”

“Exactly,” I said, typing rapidly. “I want my team digging into every breath Julian took before he met me. Men who escalate to physical violence on day four don’t do it for the first time. There’s a pattern. I want his exes, his bank statements, his offshore accounts. I want the mask completely shredded.”