Chapter 5
Marissa helped me contact Rachel.
At first, Rachel refused to speak.
Then she heard Daniel had opened debt in my name.
She called me that night.
Her voice sounded older than it should have.
“He did the same thing to me,” she said.
Daniel had convinced Rachel to move in with him.
He pressured her to quit her job.
He told her he would handle the money.
Then he opened accounts under her name and spent everything.
When she confronted him, he called her unstable.
“He told people I was addicted to pills,” Rachel whispered. “I lost friends because of him.”
“Did you report him?”
“I was afraid.”
I understood.
“But I saved emails,” she added. “And I still have the police report from when he broke my phone.”
Rachel agreed to speak to Marissa.
Tessa did too.
The evidence was growing.
Then Daniel made his biggest mistake.
He brought home paperwork and placed it in front of me.
“I need you to sign this,” he said.
It was a home-equity loan.
Against the house.
For fifty thousand dollars.
“Why?” I asked.
“Investment opportunity.”
“With whom?”
“That is not your concern.”
I read the document slowly.
The loan was in both our names.
He wanted to use my income, my credit, and my signature to borrow against a house that legally belonged only to him.
“I need time to read it,” I said.
His expression changed.
“You don’t trust me?”
“I want to understand it.”
He slammed his hand against the table.
“You think I married you to steal from you?”
The silence that followed was almost funny.
Because yes.
That was exactly what I thought.
But I smiled.
“Of course not,” I said.
He watched me for a long time.
Then he pushed the papers toward me.
“You’ll sign tomorrow.”
That night, I packed a bag.
Not everything.
Only essentials.
Documents.
Laptop.
Medication.
A change of clothes.
I drove the bag to Marissa’s office and left it there.
Then I went back to Daniel’s house.
I knew I had to leave soon.
May you like
But I wanted one more thing first.
I wanted proof of what he had done.
