But it was, I now saw, far too generous an interpretation.

They had not merely used me.

They had been, the entire time, carefully constructing me as the person who would go to prison for them.

Every year I remained the primary cardholder was another year of paper trail leading to my name and not theirs.

Every transaction they ran through my account was another brick in the wall they were building around me.

The marriage itself, I understood, kneeling on the floor of that revelation, had at some point stopped being a marriage at all and become an insurance policy, a arrangement whose real purpose was to keep a designated scapegoat close and quiet and legally exposed, so that if the day ever came when the scheme collapsed, there would be someone other than a Vance holding the bag.