While I lay in that bed sipping lukewarm tea and playing the sedated, broken woman for the morning staff, a careful and entirely lawful operation was carried out across town.

Professional movers — the kind Faye used for high-net-worth asset recovery, bonded and insured and quiet as ghosts — entered the penthouse flanked by a court-appointed inventory specialist and Faye’s senior paralegal, who walked every room with a video camera, documenting each space before, during, and after.

This was not a robbery.

It was a surgical extraction, every item on the manifest tied to a receipt in my name, every second of it filmed for the court.

Chapter 15 — Leave His Things

The grand piano came out in pieces through the freight elevator.