I spent the next week building the case.
If you want to take someone down at a company like Merrick, you don't go to the CEO and shout. You build the file. You get the documents in order. You know what you have before you say a word. I had spent eleven years learning that, and I had never used it on anyone I loved.
I started with the money.
Twelve thousand dollars out of a joint account is theft, in a legal sense, if the account was used for household expenses and one person drained it for a personal purpose. I talked to a lawyer, quietly, an old friend from school who worked in family law. She told me what I already suspected: the transfers were discoverable, and once the engagement ended, I had a claim to everything he'd moved out of the account.
Then I went after the wedding.
The v
