And I turned and looked at the charming man I had married that morning, at his hand still raised in the air, already prepared to strike a second time — and I understood that I had a choice to make, in that instant, about what the rest of my life was going to be.

He expected me to cry.

He expected me to shrink, and apologize, and learn my place.

He had chosen, catastrophically, the wrong woman to make that assumption about.

But I want to be careful how I say that, because there is a way of telling this story that turns it into a fantasy — the tale of the special woman who could fight back, who had the rare skills, who was strong enough to break the fingers and trace the fraud — and that framing, satisfying as it is, quietly does harm, because it implies that the women who cannot do those things somehow deserve their fate.

I refuse that implication completely.