My stomach turned.
“Victoria moving in…”
“Would have given them daily access,” Rebecca said. “To you. Your documents. Your routines. Your house.”
“And a witness.”
“Yes.”
I closed the folder.
For several minutes, I could not speak.
I had spent months believing Victoria wanted my kitchen because she was controlling.
She was.
I thought she wanted my bedroom because she enjoyed humiliating me.
Maybe she did.
But beneath all that pettiness sat strategy.
They were not merely trying to make me uncomfortable inside my own home. They were building a version of me they could later describe to other people.
A difficult wife.
A confused woman.
An unstable beneficiary.
Someone who needed help.
Their help.
The cruelty of it was not simply that they wanted my money.
It was that they intended to make my resistance look like proof I should not control it.
Two months after I left, Adrian moved out under the terms of a court order and negotiated agreement while the case proceeded.
