I cut the bloated executive spending Roman had disguised as the cost of doing business.

And I redirected what that waste had been bleeding away back into the people who actually made the restaurants worth anything — the kitchen staff, the line cooks, the managers who had held the places together while the man whose name was on the door robbed them.

That, in the end, was the sweetest part of it, sweeter than the divorce or the plea or the empty chair across from me — the discovery that I was good at running the thing he had told the world only he could run.

For nine years I had been positioned, by Roman and by my own quietness, as the supportive wife: the one who had contributed the money, yes, but who was understood, by everyone including sometimes myself, to be standing decoratively beside the real talent.