I’m so angry with myself for not saying something sooner, for letting this get to the point where I have to keep secrets. I have this… account, a substantial inheritance from my grandmother, and I just can't bring myself to tell Mark about it. Every time he starts talking about some new "project" for the house—a built-in espresso bar, a full home gym—I just freeze, knowing he’d see that money as a bottomless well for his endless, expensive whims. It feels like a betrayal, hoarding it away like this, but after the regimented austerity of the Corps, I just want something stable, something that isn't constantly being torn apart and rebuilt for some fleeting impulse.