For a week that wire had sat in my mind as a question mark — a clean, round sum leaving our shared account with no invoice, no explanation, no trace.

I had lost a little sleep over it.

Now the question mark had a shape: a granite countertop, a harbor view, a second bedroom, a whole imagined life he had bought with our money and meant to hand to someone else.

He had used the money we saved together to build the room he planned to leave me for.

And the woman he planned to fill it with had just, in her own hurt, handed me the one fact that turned his secret wire into the center beam of my case.

Chapter 13 — The Lawyer Was Already Looking