Three days after giving birth, I came home clutching my newborn daughter only for my husband to throw $200 at me and announce he’d sold our $3 million estate—but when I asked him who legally owned the property when he signed those papers, every drop of color vanished from his face.

Four months into her pretrial detention, Patricia Montgomery’s legal defense disintegrated.

Her private attorney withdrew from the case due to nonpayment of fees after the bankruptcy court froze her secret accounts in the Bahamas. She was assigned a public defender—a young, exhausted woman who had forty other felony cases on her desk.

The trial for interstate fraud and witness tampering was set for November. But Patricia didn't make it to trial.

Broken by the harsh realities of maximum-security detention, stripped of her servants, her hair dye, and her social status, Patricia suffered a nervous breakdown during a pretrial evidentiary hearing.

I was sitting in the courtroom gallery, holding the hand of my attorney, when Patricia was brought in.

Her once-pristine silver hair was wild and tangled. She was muttering incoherently to herself, clutching a small Bible to her chest. When she saw me sitting in the second row, dressed in an emerald silk blouse, looking radiant and healthy, something inside her snapped completely.

"You witch!" Patricia shrieked, lunging across the defense table, knocking over water pitchers and legal pads. "You stole everything from us! You were supposed to be our meal ticket! Your grandfather was supposed to die and leave that trust to my son!"

The bailiffs tackled her to the carpet, pinning her frail limbs to the floor.

"Order! Order in this court!" the judge shouted, banging the gavel frantically.

"He was the heir!" Patricia screamed, her face pressed against the floor, saliva spraying from her lips. "Daniel was born to rule! You're nothing! You’re just a broodmare! A broodmare!"

The judge shook his head in disgust. "The defendant will be removed immediately and subjected to a mandatory psychiatric evaluation at Whiting Forensic Hospital. Court is adjourned."

As they hauled the screaming, thrashing woman out of the room, Victoria leaned over to me and whispered, "That’s it. Her competency hearing will fail. She’ll spend the rest of her natural life in a secure psychiatric facility. She will never sleep in a private bed again."

I watched the doors close behind Patricia Montgomery.

There was no pity in my heart. I remembered the cold, rattling smirk she had given me while I stood bleeding on my entryway floor with my newborn child.