The freeloading ends today. My husband declared it right after his promotion, announcing that from now on, we’d have separate bank accounts. I agreed. And then, on Sunday — his sister came for dinner. She looked at the table, looked at me and said: “About time he stopped…”

He had one hand gripped firmly on the steering wheel of his expensive SUV while the other tugged at the knot of his silk tie, which was the same forest green one I had bought him for his birthday because he claimed every executive needed to look authoritative.

He was still flushed from the celebratory dinner we had just finished, and he carried the heavy scents of expensive steakhouse smoke, aged bourbon, and the smugness of a recent victory.

The dim glow from the dashboard instruments illuminated the sharp lines of his jaw, making him look more like a character in a high budget advertisement for corporate ambition than the man I had married six years ago.

We were traveling north past the flickering lights of the city skyline while our four year old daughter, Chloe, slept soundly in the back seat with her favorite stuffed elephant tucked under her arm.

The urban landscape rolled past us in a blur of gold streetlamps and glass office towers that reflected the late night traffic.

Behind us, at the dark paneled restaurant where Garrett’s new title as Regional Director had been toasted with numerous glasses of wine, people were likely still talking about how much he deserved this rise to power.

He believed every word of their praise with a terrifying intensity.

By the time we merged onto the main highway, he had already begun the process of mentally restructuring every detail of our shared life to fit his new narrative.

“The freeloading ends today,” he repeated, savoring the words as if they were a rare delicacy he wanted to taste one more time.

I turned my head slowly away from the passenger window to look at him, my voice flat as I asked, “I am sorry, but what exactly are you talking about?”

Garrett let out a small, condescending laugh that was not intended to be humorous, but rather served as a shield for the cruelty he was about to deliver.

It was a habit he had recently developed where he would laugh before saying something hurtful so that he could later claim I was being far too sensitive if I reacted.

“You heard me perfectly well, Elena,” he said while looking straight at the road. “From this moment forward, we are going to maintain completely separate bank accounts.”

I stared at him in the dim light of the car, feeling a cold sensation begin to settle in the pit of my stomach.