On my first night inside the $4.8 million Malibu beach house I bought with my own money, my mother-in-law called and said, “We’re moving in tomorrow, Marcus said it’s fine, and if you don’t like it, you can find somewhere else.”

But I paid cash through my newly formed company, Drexler Consulting LLC.

“Congratulations, Miss Drexler,” said my real estate attorney, David Chen Williams, as we signed the papers on October 10th. “The property deed is registered under your LLC with very specific occupancy clauses. Only the registered owner and explicitly invited guests are permitted residents. Any unauthorized occupancy constitutes criminal trespass.”

“Perfect,” I said, signing my name with a fountain pen Victoria had given me. “I want everything ironclad.”

The LLC structure wasn’t just about taxes. It was about protection. After years of Eleanor treating everything Marcus owned as communal family property, I needed boundaries that couldn’t be crossed. The operating agreement specified that I held 100% ownership, with no spousal claims possible under California law.

I hadn’t told Marcus about the house yet. We’d been living increasingly separate lives, him at his mother’s beck and call, me building an empire he barely noticed. He knew I’d resigned and assumed I’d be taking a few weeks off before finding another little job, as his mother would say.