Trevor had signed it when he was broke and in love, or in something he called love, and had then spent four years forgetting it existed, because for four years it had never been relevant.

His family had extracted my money through demand and guilt and sheer exhausting persistence, none of which quite rose to the legal definition of extortion, and no one had ever raised a hand.

The prenup had sat in a drawer, a dead document, its clauses theoretical.

And then, on one ordinary morning, his mother had slapped me, and his sister had spent three years extracting funds under escalating pressure, and the theoretical clauses had all at once become the most consequential sentences in our lives.

He had built the instrument of his own eviction, four years earlier, with his own signature, and had forgotten he was holding it.

His mother pulled the trigger.