Chapter 4 - HIS FINAL CARD
Derek held my keys between two fingers.
“You forgot these.”
I did not move toward him.
“Keep them.”
He laughed.
“You'll need your car.”
“Not anymore.”
Martin opened the rear door of his sedan.
Derek's expression darkened.
“Chloe, if you leave this property, don't bother coming back.”
I looked at him.
“That is the first useful thing you've said all day.”
Several relatives looked away.
Someone near the doorway coughed to hide a laugh.
Brenda heard it.
Her face turned crimson.
“This isn't funny.”
“No.”
I looked at her stained floor.
“It really isn't.”
Derek stepped forward.
“We had an agreement.”
“We had wedding vows.”
“You broke them before the catering trays were cold.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You think you're better than us because your family has money.”
That sentence answered a question I had been asking myself for months.
Why had Derek become increasingly obsessed with what my parents owned?
Why had Brenda made little jokes about “old money.”
Why had Mallory repeatedly asked whether my company belonged solely to me?
It had never been curiosity.
It had been research.
“You didn't marry me,” I said.
“You married what you thought I could give you.”
Derek scoffed.
“You're being theatrical.”
Martin quietly interrupted.
“Before Chloe leaves, I need to ask you one question.”
Derek glared at him.
“What?”
“Did you submit the forged power of attorney?”
No answer.
Martin held up the document.
“Because if you did, this stops being a family dispute.”
Brenda looked at Derek.
“You told me it was legitimate.”
Derek snapped.
“Stop talking.”
The words hit her like a slap.
For the first time since I met Brenda, she looked afraid of her own son.
I noticed it.
So did Martin.
Derek grabbed his mother's elbow.
“Inside.”
She pulled away.
“Don't touch me.”
The family watched their carefully rehearsed unity begin to collapse.
I stepped into Martin's car.
Before shutting the door, I looked at Derek one last time.
He had known me for three years.
But he had never seen me without the need to be loved by him.
That woman was gone now.
Martin drove through the gates.
I watched the mansion disappear behind us.
Only when we reached the highway did I finally begin shaking.
Martin said nothing for several minutes.
Then he handed me a bottle of water.
“I need you to understand something.”
“What?”
“The forged document wasn't submitted to your company.”
I looked at him.
“Then where was it submitted?”
He hesitated.
“To a bank.”
My pulse jumped.
“Which bank?”
“Northway Capital.”
I knew the name.
Derek's company used Northway for commercial financing.
Martin continued.
“He attempted to use your ownership interests as support for a line of credit.”
“How much?”
Martin tightened both hands around the steering wheel.
“Three point two million dollars.”
I stared through the windshield.
Derek had not just planned to control my assets someday.
He had already tried to borrow against them.
Three days before our wedding.
Before I had even become his wife.
“Was the loan approved?”
“No.”
“Not yet.”
The last two words terrified me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the bank requested additional verification.”
“When?”
“Monday morning.”
Monday was two days away.
I exhaled slowly.
“So we stop it.”
“We already did.”
I turned toward him.
“Then why do you look worried?”
Martin glanced at me.
“Because Derek submitted something else with the application.”
He reached into the folder.
And handed me a photograph.
It showed me walking into a medical clinic six months earlier.
Beneath the picture was a typed statement.
SUBJECT HAS HISTORY OF NEUROLOGICAL INSTABILITY.
I stared at the lie.
Then I understood the plan.
The forged power of attorney only became useful if I was considered unable to manage my own affairs.
Derek had not been preparing for divorce.
He had been preparing to have me declared incompetent.
May you like
And the man I had married fourteen hours earlier had apparently begun building the story months before proposing.
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