“In two weeks, your husband’s firm holds its annual charity gala.

Every partner, every investor, every member of the board will be in that room.

That is not a place to slink in with a private divorce filing.

That is a place to present what he has done to the people who have a right to know it — his partners, whose firm he is embezzling from — and to serve him, cleanly, in front of the institution he betrayed.” I want to be honest about why I agreed, because it would be easy to dress it up as pure justice and it was not only that.

Part of me wanted him to feel, for one moment, a fraction of what he’d planned for me — the ground vanishing with no warning, in front of everyone.