At our wedding reception, my husband raised his champagne glass and gave away our future before the cake had even been cut.

Three days later, I received a formal request through my legal counsel.

Grant was being held without bail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown, awaiting his arraignment on federal fraud charges. His court-appointed public defender had reached out to Sarah, stating that Grant was refusing to cooperate with federal prosecutors unless he was allowed a fifteen-minute meeting with me.

My father advised against it, but I needed to close this chapter of my life once and for all.

I sat in a small, cold interrogation room with concrete walls and a heavy steel door. A small high-placed window cast a dusty beam of light across the metal table where I sat, holding a warm cup of tea.

The heavy steel door clicked open, and a corrections officer escorted Grant into the room.

He looked unrecognizable.

The tailored designer suits, silk ties, and pristine Rolex watch were gone, replaced by a drab orange prison jumpsuit and heavy plastic handcuffs around his wrists. His hair was messy, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had lost weight in just seventy-two hours.

He sat down heavily in the metal chair across from me, the steel chains rattling loudly against the table.

“Claire,” he rasped, his voice hollow and weak. “You actually came.”

“You have ten minutes, Grant,” I said plainly, setting my tea down. “Say what you came to say.”

Grant stared down at his handcuffed hands, tears pooling in his tired eyes. “They’re charging me with seven federal felonies, Claire. The prosecutor says I’m looking at fifteen to twenty years in federal prison.”

“You committed federal crimes, Grant,” I pointed out coldly. “You forged bank signatures, stole from elderly retirees, and ran an illegal enterprise.”

“I did it for us!” Grant suddenly burst out, leaning across the table as far as his handcuffs would allow. “I wanted to give you the life you deserved! I wanted my mother to respect me! I was drowning in debt, Claire! I thought... I thought if I just got the $2.8 million from your trust fund, I could pay off the bad loans, finish the lake house, and make everything right!”

I looked at him with profound pity, realizing how utterly deluded he truly was.

“You didn't do it for me, Grant,” I said softly. “You did it because you are a coward who couldn't bear the thought of people knowing you were broke. You cared more about your mother’s fake country-club pride than you cared about honor, truth, or love.”

Grant slumped back into his chair, sobbing quietly. “My mother... she’s in the women’s wing down the hall. She’s hysterical, Claire. She keeps saying it’s all my fault.”

“She’s right,” I said. “And it’s her fault too. You spent your whole life trying to buy her love with stolen money, and now you’re both paying the price for it.”

Grant looked up at me, his face twisted in desperate agonizing regret. “Did you ever love me, Claire? Even for a second?”

I stood up from the metal chair, smoothing down my tailored jacket.

“I loved the man I thought you were,” I answered honestly. “The charming, honest, hard-working man who cared about building a future together. But that man never existed. He was just a mask you wore to get close to my bank account.”