My attorney’s office was silent when I walked in. He did not offer me a seat. He slid a thick folder across the desk and said, “Your wife’s lawyer sent this over this morning. I need you to look at it and then explain to me why I shouldn’t drop you as a client.” I opened it with shaking hands. The affair was in there, documented cleanly, but he was right, that was not the worst part. Beneath the hotel receipts and the surveillance photos were financial records I recognized, and my stomach turned to ice. Adeline had not only tracked my spending on Camille. She had traced where the money came from.

For the past year, to fund the dinners and the jewelry and the weekends, I had quietly moved money out of an account I was not supposed to touch. It held funds from my business partnership, money that belonged to investors, not to me. I had told myself I would replace it before anyone noticed. Adeline had noticed. Every transfer was there, dated, matched to a hotel charge or a gift, laid out in a sequence that told a single, damning story. My affair had been a betrayal of my marriage. This was a crime, and my wife had assembled the entire case file.