The water wasn't at a rolling boil, but it was hot enough to create a nightmare. I leaned over the stove, carefully stirring the heavy steel pot of oats—preparing the exact breakfast my mother-in-law, Eleanor, had demanded.

Back in Boston, the walls were closing in with terrifying speed.

David Moreland sat at a wobbly metal desk in a cheap, fluorescent-lit sublet office downtown—the only space he could afford after his firm fired him and his personal credit cards were permanently declined. His bespoke pinstripe suit was wrinkled; his tie was loosened; his hair was uncombed.

For forty-eight hours, he had tried every legal maneuver, every bluff, and every threat in his repertoire. Nothing worked.

The state bar association had formally suspended his license pending an investigation into fraudulent asset leveraging and misuse of client trust accounts. His former partners at Sterling & Associates refused to take his calls, treating him like a radioactive hazard. And his mother, Eleanor, was calling him twenty times a day from her cramped studio apartment, screaming hysterically about the lack of central heating and demanding to know when David was going to "fix" Irene.

David stared at his cell phone on the desk. It vibrated violently against the metal surface.

He picked it up, seeing my name flashing on the screen—or rather, the secure VoIP number Marcus had set up for all legal communications.

He pressed accept, his voice cracking with a desperate mixture of rage and pleading. "Irene! Where the hell are you?! This insanity has gone far enough! You had your little joke, you proved your point, now call off your bloodhound of a lawyer and come home! Mother is losing her mind, the house is completely empty, and—"

"David," I interrupted smoothly from my office in Melbourne, the sound of my calm voice cutting through his panic like a scalpel. "You're on speakerphone with my attorney, Marcus Vance."

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the line.

"Irene..." David whispered, his voice dropping an octave, losing all its arrogant bluster. "Please. We've been married for twenty-two years. You can't just throw all of that away over... over a spilled cup of water. It was an accident. Mother didn't mean it."

"No, David," I replied steadily. "It wasn't an accident. And even if it was, the water was just the temperature that finally woke me up."

"You ruined me!" David suddenly shouted, the veneer of civility shattering entirely. "You took my house, you froze my accounts, you got me disbarred! I built a life, a career—!"

"You built nothing, David," I said, my voice ice-cold. "You occupied space. You lived off my salary, my trust, and my endurance, while treating me like dirt beneath your mother's shoes. The accounts you thought were yours were funded by my sweat. The house you thought you owned was purchased with my inheritance. Every single thing you thought you controlled was just a loan from me. And now, the loan has been called in."

"Irene, wait—" David pleaded, the sound of a grown man breaking down echoing through the speaker. "What am I supposed to do? I have nothing left."