Chapter 1

For fifteen years, my life with Sarah had been a constant, low-level hum of complaint. The source was always the same.

"Eight thousand dollars," she would say, her voice laced with a familiar, weary bitterness. "That' s all your mother gave us. Eight thousand. My cousin Jessica got thirty-eight thousand, and her husband doesn' t even make half of what you do."

This wasn' t a new conversation. It was a well-worn track she played on repeat, especially after any family gathering where wealth was even subtly on display. It was the background music to our marriage. Tonight, it was louder than usual. She had just gotten off the phone with Jessica.

"They' re going to Hawaii again," she announced, throwing her phone onto the sofa. "Must be nice."

I didn' t answer. I just kept stirring the pasta sauce on the stove, the rhythmic scrape of the spoon against the pot a small, steady counterpoint to her rising agitation.

"Are you even listening to me, Mark?"

"I' m listening, Sarah. You' re upset about the dowry again."

"Upset? Upset is an understatement! It' s humiliating! Fifteen years, and it still feels like a slap in the face. Your mother has money. She' s not poor. She just never liked me."

That was another favorite refrain. It wasn' t just about the money, she claimed, but the principle. The lack of respect. But I knew better. It was always about the money.

She paced the kitchen, her expensive heels clicking angrily on the tile. Suddenly, she stopped and turned to me, her eyes lit with a strange, calculating fire.

"I have an idea," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

I braced myself. Her ideas were rarely simple and never cheap.

"What if we get divorced?"

I almost dropped the spoon. I stared at her, unsure if I had heard correctly.

"Divorced?"

"A fake divorce," she clarified, waving her hand impatiently. "We go through the motions, just on paper. I' ll move out, cry a little, make a scene. Your mother will feel so guilty. She' ll see you miserable without me, and she' ll panic. She' ll do anything to get me to come back."

I just looked at her, my mind a blank. The audacity of it was stunning.

"She' ll offer me a new dowry," Sarah continued, her excitement growing. "A real one. I bet we could get at least eight hundred, maybe nine hundred thousand out of her. And some of her good jewelry, the diamond necklace, the jade bracelet. Then, once the money and jewelry are in my hands, we get remarried. Simple."

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text message. I pulled it out, my thumb swiping across the screen automatically. It was from my boss.

`Mark, the board just approved the Q3 performance bonuses. Yours is $3 million. Congratulations. The wire transfer will be initiated tomorrow.`

I read the message once, then twice. A strange calm washed over me, silencing the noise of the kitchen, of Sarah' s voice, of the last fifteen years. I looked up from the screen, straight into my wife' s greedy, expectant eyes. A plan of my own, one I had barely dared to fantasize about, began to form, solid and real.

"Okay," I said, my voice even. "Let' s do it."

Her face broke into a triumphant grin, completely missing the cold resolve settling deep in my gut.

Before this moment, there had been another fight, a more direct one. We were at my mother' s house for her birthday dinner last month. Sarah had cornered her in the living room while I was in the backyard with our son, Ethan.

"Mrs. Thompson," Sarah' s voice carried through the open window, sharp and condescending. "I was just telling Mark, it' s a miracle we' ve managed to save anything for Ethan' s college fund, considering the start you gave us."

My mother' s reply was soft, almost inaudible. "We gave what we could at the time, Sarah. It was a different time."

"Eight thousand dollars isn' t a 'different time,' it' s an insult," Sarah shot back. "Jessica' s parents gave her a down payment on a house. We got enough for a used car."

I walked back inside, a knot tightening in my stomach. "Sarah, that' s enough."

I tried to guide her away, to smooth things over. It was my default mode: de-escalate, manage, endure. My mother looked small and tired on her floral sofa, her birthday forgotten.

"It' s not enough, Mark!" Sarah pulled her arm away from me, her face flushed. "She needs to understand the position she put us in!"

I saw the hurt in my mother' s eyes and felt a familiar surge of helpless anger. I was tired of being the buffer. I was tired of the endless, grinding conflict.

Later that night, in the car on the way home, the silence was thick with resentment. Then Sarah, still fuming from the confrontation, turned to me.

"There' s only one way to fix this," she said, her voice hard as steel. "We have to make her pay. We' ll get a divorce."

It was the same absurd idea she' d presented tonight, born from the same well of greed. Back then, I had dismissed it as a fit of anger. But now, with three million dollars waiting for me, it didn't sound absurd at all. It sounded like an escape.