My husband sat in court in a three-thousand-dollar suit beside the “Butcher of Broadway,” mocking me like I was already broken because he’d frozen my accounts, cut off my cards, and left me alone long enough to lose by default… but just as the judge exhaled, lifted the gavel, and looked ready to hand him everything, the courtroom doors flew open

“She is late,” Hudson said with enough volume that I could hear every syllable, “or maybe she finally figured out it is cheaper to just surrender and move into a shelter.” Wesley’s smile deepened without ever reaching his eyes, as he was a man in his late fifties with a face trained to convey disdain without seeming emotionally involved.

“It will not matter if she appears at all since we filed the emergency freeze on Monday,” Wesley murmured back while checking his pristine files. “She has no liquid access and no available credit, which means no counsel and no way to walk out with anything we do not choose to let her keep.”

I kept my eyes fixed on the judge’s bench and tried to breathe slowly enough that no one would see my ribs shaking under my thin dress. That part was much harder than I had expected because I had not slept for three nights straight while the images of my frozen accounts flashed behind my eyelids.