My husband had me sentenced to ten years for a two-million-dollar fraud I never committed, and in the courthouse corridor he pulled my grandmother’s ring off my finger and told me to enjoy it. I didn’t argue. I handed a folded piece of paper to the guard.

PART 1 — THE CORRIDOR

Ten years.

That is what Judge Arlette Vinnicombe gave me at four minutes past eleven on a Thursday morning at the Cassell County Courthouse, for a fraud of one million nine hundred and forty thousand dollars committed through the company where I was chief financial officer.

The transfers carried my electronic signature. The sessions came from my machine. Four phantom vendors had been approved with my credentials, on days I was at my desk.

Everything pointed at me.

My husband knew exactly how well it pointed at me, because he had built every piece of it.

They cuffed me at the defence table and walked me out into the corridor, and about forty people came out of that courtroom behind us and stood along the walls.

Brett stepped into my path machen.