to review the documents at issue.”

She placed a letter beside the photograph.

Opposing counsel read the first paragraph and went still.

The letter was short and devastating.

The materials Mara had referenced in a strategy email obtained through subpoena were proprietary internal compensation projections.

They had been exported from a synced company tablet at 12:14 a.m.

from my home IP address on the same night Graham had been working in the study.

I hadn’t even known the tablet was still logged in.

Graham had.

His lawyer turned to him so sharply her chair squeaked.

“Tell me you didn’t access her firm files.”

Graham didn’t answer.

The mediator folded her hands.

“Mr.

Smith?”

He leaned back, jaw flexing.

“It was our home.

The device was there.

I didn’t steal anything.

I was trying to understand what future income looked like.”

I heard my own breath go thin.

Dana didn’t let the silence save him.

“You were trying to build a settlement demand around income that had not vested and might never vest.

And you were doing it with a consultant you paid from joint funds while urging your wife to sign away tracing protection before filing.”

“That isn’t what happened,” Graham said, finally looking at me.

I looked back at him.

“Then why did you tell her to make me feel obligated?”

His eyes flicked away.

Opposing counsel asked for a break.

In the hallway, through the glass wall, I could see Graham and his lawyer arguing in hard, clipped motions.

Mara was patched in by phone at some point because I saw the lawyer hold the receiver out, then yank it back, her face hardening with each sentence.

Dana stood beside me at the window.

“There’s more,” she said quietly.

“There always is.”

She handed me a printout of the burner email header.

The routing domain connected back to Harbor Bridge Resolutions.

Then she handed me another page from the forensic consultant.

The attempted bank logins on my accounts had come from Graham’s laptop.

It should not have shocked me, but it did.

Maybe because a strategy meeting with a consultant still allowed for some pathetic defense.

Fear.

Greed.

Panic.

But the login attempts felt more intimate than the filing.

They meant he had stood inside our home, within earshot of me, and tried keys in locks he knew were mine.

When we went back into the room, Graham looked different.

Less polished.

More tired around the mouth.

His lawyer spoke first.

“My client is prepared to withdraw the emergency motion without prejudice.”

Dana didn’t move.

“And reimburse the joint account for payments to Harbor Bridge Resolutions.

And stipulate that the assets transferred on the fifteenth are separate property not subject to division.

And preserve all devices used to access Bright Harbor materials.”

Graham let out a small laugh that had no humor in it.

“You’re turning this into a criminal case.”

“No,” Dana said.

“You did that when you confused marriage with entitlement.”

The mediator asked both lawyers to step through terms.

What followed was less dramatic than television and far more brutal.

Each line item dismantled a piece of the plan Graham thought he had built.

My inheritance stayed excluded.

My premarital investment account stayed excluded.

The deferred compensation material could not be used to inflate the