It took my house and my name and my freedom, yes.

But it also took the static.

It left me in a small quiet room with nothing to do but think, and a mind that had once been trained, and honed, and paid by the state to think about exactly the kind of thing my husband had done.

A woman with nothing left to lose and nothing to distract her is not a broken woman.

She is the most dangerous thing there is, if she happens to know how money moves.

Roman had removed, one by one, every single thing that had ever kept me from paying attention to him.

And then he had left me alone, for two years, to pay attention.

I do not think, to this day, that he ever understood what a gift he had given me.

He thought he was burying me.

He was, in fact, clearing my desk.

Chapter 2 — She Pushed Her

He had stood in a courtroom, my husband, and held the hand of his mistress, and wept.

“She pushed her,” Roman had whispered to the jury, his voice breaking on cue.

“My wife was jealous.