“Your Honor, this is a standard divorce proceeding,” the opposing counsel argued.
“Not anymore,” the judge said sharply. “Proceed.”
Marcus lifted a tablet. On the main courtroom screen, a video feed of my old kitchen appeared. Three years earlier. Me stepping backward, my hands raised defensively. Julian advancing. His hand striking my face so hard my head hit the marble counter.
Nora covered her mouth. Not from horror, but from pure fear.
The next clip showed Julian dragging an encrypted hard drive from my home office at two in the morning. The next showed him meeting Nora outside our corporate laboratory. The next showed them handing sealed folders to a man currently under federal investigation for medical-device fraud.
Julian shouted, “That’s edited!”
I turned to him. “No. It’s backed up in six secure locations.”
He stared at me as if he were looking at a complete stranger.
That was his biggest mistake. He had married me when I was twenty-four and quiet, the daughter of a nurse, the woman who remembered every birthday, every password, and every single lie. He had entirely forgotten that before I became his wife, I was the head cybersecurity architect who built Vance Medical’s internal audit system.
