My Husband Took It All in the Divorce – He Had No Idea What He Was Actually Getting…

The Long Game of Alexis Dunst

His lawyer leaned in and whispered five words, just five. Vincent’s face, that smug, self-satisfied face I’d stared at across the breakfast table for 15 years, went completely white.

His hands started trembling. The papers he’d been so eager to sign were shaking like leaves in a storm.

And me, for the first time in three years, I smiled. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me start from the beginning because you need to understand how we got here. You need to understand how a woman everyone thought had lost her mind actually played the longest, most patient game of her life.

My name is Alexis Dunst. I’m 34 years old, and until three months ago, I was married to Vincent Mercer.

Fifteen years of marriage—that’s longer than most Hollywood relationships, longer than some small countries have existed, and definitely longer than my patience should have lasted. But I’m a stubborn woman; I get it from my grandmother.

I met Vincent when I was 17. I’d graduated high school early, not because I was some genius, but because I was practical and motivated and really, really wanted to get out of my parents’ house.

I got a job at Henderson and Price Law Firm as a file clerk—minimum wage, maximum paper cuts, but it was mine. By 18, I’d worked my way up to legal assistant.

I was good with details, good with numbers, and good with keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open. Vincent was 24 when we met at a client event, charming, ambitious, and full of dreams about building a real estate empire.

He talked about the future like it was already his, like success was just waiting for him to show up and claim it.

“He said he was going to build something incredible.”

“I said I’d help him file the paperwork.”

Romance, right? We got married when I was 19.

Tyler came along when I was 20. I kept working at the law firm part-time while raising our son, building up my 401k, and saving every spare dollar.

My grandmother always said a woman should have her own money. Not secret money, she’d clarify, just her own—something nobody could take.

At 23, Vincent’s business finally took off. He asked me to quit the law firm and help him full-time.

He needed someone to manage the books, handle clients, and coordinate with contractors—someone he could trust completely. So, I became his unpaid everything.

I was the bookkeeper, office manager, client liaison, interior decorator for model homes, marketing coordinator, and event planner. I did it all while raising Tyler, managing our household, and somehow keeping everyone fed and reasonably happy.

My official title was wife. My unofficial title was everything else.

For 11 years, I poured myself into building Vincent’s dream. and for 11 years, he got the credit, the awards, and the recognition.

At every industry event, I was Vincent’s wife. At every celebration, he thanked his team, his mentors, and his vision, but somehow never quite got around to thanking me.

Somewhere along the way, things shifted. He started making decisions without consulting me and started staying late for work more and more often.

He started criticizing little things: the way I dressed, the meals I cooked, and my lack of ambition.

Lack of ambition? I was running his entire back office for free while raising his son and keeping his life organized, but sure, not ambitious enough.

Then three months ago, he dropped the bomb. He came home on a Tuesday evening.

I was making dinner, his favorite actually, because I’m apparently a glutton for unappreciated effort. He sat me down at the kitchen table with this look on his face—not sad, not apologetic, just business-like.

“I want a divorce,” he said. “And then I want the house, the cars, the business—everything. You can keep Tyler.”

He said it like he was ordering from a menu.

“I’ll have the assets, hold the child, thanks.”

Keep Tyler—like our 15-year-old son was a leftover pizza, like he was an inconvenience being graciously allowed to stay with me. I just stared at him.

Fifteen years of marriage and this was how it ended, at our kitchen table between the salt shaker and the butter dish, like I was just another item he was discarding. What I didn’t know in that moment, what I wouldn’t find out until later, was that Vincent had been planning this for months.

He already had a lawyer, Harold Whitfield—expensive and experienced. He’d been building his exit strategy while I was meal prepping and scheduling his dentist appointments.

I’d been blindsided by a man I’d trusted with everything. The next day, his mother showed up.

Lorraine Mercer, a woman who had treated me like the help for 15 years, arrived with her perfectly styled hair and her perfectly practiced sympathy face. She patted my hand and told me I should have tried harder to keep him happy.

“Men have needs, dear,” she said, like she was explaining something complicated to a slow child.

Lorraine’s advice on marriage was always fascinating, considering her husband spent seven days a week on the golf course specifically to avoid being in the same room as her. But sure, I was the problem.

That first week was a blur. Vincent moved me to the guest room, had documents drawn up, settlements proposed, and timelines established.

Everything was moving so fast, and I felt like I was drowning. Everyone saw a woman whose world had just collapsed—a wife being thrown away after 15 years of service, a victim who didn’t see it coming.

But here’s the thing: what Vincent didn’t know, what nobody knew, was that I’d found something three years ago. Something buried in his own financial records, something he thought was hidden forever, and I’d been quietly, patiently preparing ever since.