The lawyers arrived with the paperwork before dessert.
But the real surprise was never meant to happen, because Brian Coleman never meant for me to understand the difference between a harmless deduction and a felony. At least, that’s what he believed as he casually talked about inventing “business expenses” across our kitchen table while I made his coffee, the steam rising between us like a veil.
With my back turned, he never noticed how I angled my phone against the sugar bowl, recording every word as I nodded sympathetically.
“You wouldn’t get it, Marissa,” he’d say, the condescension growing sharper with each passing year. “Your literature degree is great for bedtime stories, but this is real business.”
And I would smile—soft, agreeable, harmless—playing my part perfectly.
For five years, I maintained a meticulously crafted persona: the supportive, simple wife who traded academic ambition for domestic bliss. My shelves of classic novels became the perfect prop for his favorite story about me—Marissa, the woman who lived in fictional worlds and couldn’t possibly grasp the machinery of his financial empire. What Brian failed to recognize was that literature had trained me to observe, to analyze patterns, and to recognize foreshadowing in a man’s character long before he thought the plot had begun.
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