I only needed to stop being the one thing that had allowed him to believe he was above the rules: a wife who would absorb any humiliation and come home quiet.

The moment I stopped absorbing, the rules he had been violating for years simply became visible, and the machinery my own father had built into that company’s charter did the rest.

I did not have to hate Conrad.

I only had to stop protecting him.

There is a world of difference between the two, and the difference is the whole reason I was able to sign the papers, later, without a single second of hesitation.

Chapter 8 — Adira’s Two Fronts