He was in Florida with Vanessa Cole while twelve thousand dollars of our joint savings sat in an account I couldn’t see.

He had taken five hundred dollars every single week while telling me we were too broke to launch my design studio.

My grandmother had worked thirty years as an accountant to save sixty-five thousand dollars, and she had given every cent of it to me for our house down payment.

I sat in the dark car, twisting my grandmother’s silver ring around my thumb and wondering whether that money was still legally protected or whether Mark had found a way to strip away her legacy too.

I slipped the ticket in its plastic sleeve into the zipper pocket of my purse and locked the car doors.