While Marius was downstairs giving a pre-gala interview, I went into his study safe for the diamonds I was meant to wear.

He assumed I didn’t know the combination — assumed, in his vanity, that I was too scattered to remember it.

Behind the velvet boxes was a thick manila folder.

My hands were steady, which is not the same as calm.

It was a nearly finalized legal petition: my husband was filing for a medical conservatorship over me.

He had paid a private psychiatrist to sign an affidavit declaring me mentally incompetent — early-onset paranoid delusions, the document said.