My hands were still shaking from hearing my own marriage pronounced legally dead in a courtroom that smelled like stale coffee and old carpet.
But my father, Everett Marsh, had spent thirty-two years investigating financial fraud for the state of Ashcroft.
Thirty-two years investigating financial fraud.
When Everett Marsh told you to do something in that particular tone, you learned a long time ago not to ask why first. You just did it, and asked your questions after.
So I sat down on a cold bench outside Courtroom 6B, pulled up my banking apps, and changed the PINs on every card I had. Ten of them, total.
Business checking. Personal savings. Emergency line of credit. Travel card. Corporate card. Even the old matte-black card tucked behind my driver’s license that I hadn’t used in years.
Ten cards. Ten new PINs. Done before I’d even stood back up off that bench.
That’s when Marcus walked past with his girlfriend hanging off his arm.
Marcus Lowell and I had been married six years.
Six years, and it ended in a courthouse hallway that smelled faintly of bleach and old paperwork, my father’s hand still wrapped tight around my wrist like he was afraid the floor might open up and swallow me whole if he let go too soon.
Selena Cole walked beside Marcus in a cream silk blouse, wearing the particular smug little smile of a woman who believed, with her whole chest, that she’d won something.
She’d won something.
Marcus slowed down just long enough to lean in close.
“Try not to cry too hard, Simone,” he murmured. “Some women just don’t know how to keep a man.”
Selena giggled behind her manicured hand.
I looked up from my phone, mid-PIN-change on card number seven.
“Some men don’t know how to read a bank statement,” I said.
His expression flickered. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to catch it and file it away for later, the way my father had taught me to notice things without ever letting my own face give away that I’d noticed them at all.
