I came home early from a trip, hoping to surprise my husband, Ben. Instead, I found him in the garden, nervously burying a giant black egg. When I asked, he froze and told me to go inside. Suspicion burned—I waited until he left and dug it up.My heart raced with every scoop of dirt—I knew something was wrong.

It was a large, hollow plastic egg—clearly fake. Our neighbor caught me with it, but I shrugged him off. Hours later, a news alert flashed: a scam involving counterfeit artifacts shaped like black eggs. My stomach sank. Ben had been duped.Suddenly, all our recent financial stress started to make sense.

That night, I pressed him. He broke—$15,000 gone, all from our savings. “I thought it was real… I just wanted to surprise you with a Europe trip,” he whispered, crushed. He wasn’t hiding guilt—he was hiding shame.I saw then it wasn’t greed, but desperation to fix what he felt was slipping.