Three days after my twin sons were born, my husband brought twenty-two members of his family into a hospital room and offered me two hundred thousand dollars to sign away my marriage, my children, and my right to ever ask about their company's accounts. They expected me to cry. I read every page and signed all of them.

And there is a camera in that room, in the corner by the ceiling, because it is a hospital.

I did not cry.

I opened the folder and I read it.

All of it. Every page, in front of twenty-two people, for eleven minutes, while nobody spoke.

The dissolution was ordinary. The custody instrument was four pages of language that I recognised because I have read a lot of instruments.

And on page nine, under a heading about mutual releases, there was a clause that had nothing to do with a marriage.

It said I permanently waived any right to request, review, audit, or initiate any inquiry into the financial records of Thackery Row Holdings, including its client trust accounts, and that I released all claims arising from anything I might have seen in the course of my former employment.

Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to a woman with two newborns and no job.