My husband thought he had won everything after draining our accounts and transferring our fortune into his name, so he brought his mistress to court to humiliate me—but the moment I removed my coat, the judge leaned forward in shock, his face turned ghost white, and for the first time in ten years, I smiled.

Six months later.

The visiting room at the Otisville Federal Correctional Institution was bright, smelling of cheap floor wax and old plastic.

Jason Mitchell sat behind the clear partition at Table 7.

He wore a standard-issue dark green jumpsuit. His hair was cut short by an institutional barber, uneven and graying rapidly at the temples. His hands, once soft and adorned with a platinum Patek Philippe watch, were rough, covered in small cuts from his daily assignment in the prison laundry.

The heavy steel door on the visitor’s side buzzed open.

Jason sat up straight, a desperate, pathetic spark of hope lighting his hollow eyes. He had written eleven letters to Arthur Sterling, four to his father, and three to Madison Brooks. None of them had been answered.

The woman who sat down on the other side of the glass was not his lawyer.

It was me.

I wore a simple, beautifully tailored cream-colored cashmere coat, open at the collar to reveal a delicate gold chain. I looked rested. I looked healthy. I looked ten years younger than the woman he had tried to crush in Courtroom 4B.

Jason grabbed the heavy black telephone receiver on his side of the partition.

I picked up mine.

"Did you come to gloat, Iris?" he spat, though his voice was thin, reedy, stripped of its old baritone authority. "Look at me! Look what you did to me! I am a Mitchell! I shouldn't be in this place with these animals!"

"You're not an animal, Jason," I said through the receiver. "You're a convicted felon. There's a distinct legal difference."

"I have an appeal pending!" he shouted, his face reddening as he leaned against the scratched plastic partition. "Sterling is filing a writ of habeas corpus next week! When I get out of here—"

"Arthur Sterling was disbarred three weeks ago, Jason," I interrupted gently. "He pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for helping you backdate the Mexican clinical trial documents. He's currently awaiting sentencing in New Jersey. He won't be filing any writs."

Jason’s mouth fell open. The receiver slipped an inch in his hand.

"And your father?" he whispered. "My father won't let you keep the trust. He’s my father!"

"Your father passed away peacefully in his sleep twelve days ago, Jason," I said.

The color drained entirely from his face. "No... no, you're lying! I would have been notified!"

"The warden was notified," I replied. "Your father’s will specifically instructed that no family members currently serving federal sentences were to be permitted compassionate leave for the memorial service. The estate has been placed into an irrevocable charitable trust administered by the Vance Institute."

"You took everything," he choked out, tears of pure, selfish frustration welling in his red-rimmed eyes. "Everything. The house. The cars. The patents. Even my father's memory. You left me with nothing!"

"I didn't take anything that wasn't mine, Jason," I said, leaning closer to the glass. "You thought that because you married me, you owned the spark inside my brain. You thought that by burning my body, you could make me afraid of the world."

I reached up with my free hand and lightly traced the silver scar along my collarbone.

"These scars didn't mean I was broken," I said. "They meant I was fireproof."

I set the receiver down on the cradle.

Jason began slamming the black telephone against the partition, screaming words I couldn't hear through the reinforced glass. Two armed correctional officers immediately stepped forward, grabbing his arms, forcing him face-down onto the metal table, and twisting his wrists behind his back to snap the handcuffs in place.

I stood up.