I said nothing.

I kept the folder.

I went on, for two months, playing the obedient wife he thought I was, nodding, swallowing, enduring, while underneath the performance I made careful, quiet, unhurried plans.

I let him keep believing he had all the power, because his belief that he had all the power was, itself, the most powerful weapon I possessed.

A man who thinks he has already won stops guarding against the woman he has beaten.

And so Julian walked toward his sleeper cabin that December afternoon, secure in his victory over a wife who no longer existed, carrying out a plan against a woman who had been ten steps ahead of him for two months, and had simply, patiently, been waiting for him to hand her the perfect moment.