Five minutes after my divorce was final, my father gripped my arm outside the courthouse and said, “Block every card, right now.” That night my ex tried to spend $300,000 on his mistress’s sapphire necklace with my company’s black card — in a club my firm owned.

“It was never half his, Mari. That’s the part he got wrong. Illinois is equitable distribution, not community property, and you built the firm before him and kept it separate, and your prenup—your mother made you sign it, God rest her, and you hated it—says the business and its accounts are your separate property. He wasn’t entitled to half the company. He knew it. So instead of fighting for half in the divorce, he just started taking it out the side door fourteen months ago, in amounts small enough that he figured you’d never audit, planning to have the affair fully funded and the girlfriend set up before the divorce was even final.”

“And tonight—”

“Tonight he walked into your club and tried to put two hundred thousand dollars on a card from a drawer, because he’s gotten used to your money being his money, and because he thought the divorce ending meant the taking could get bigger, not that it had to stop. He thought the judge’s signature freed him. It freed you. He just hasn’t understood the difference yet.”