Chapter 3: A Signature That Wasn't Mine
I read page three twice.
Then I read it a third time, because my brain refused to accept what my eyes were seeing.
It was a property transfer document.
My house.
My address.
My full legal name printed at the top.
And at the bottom, a signature that looked close enough to mine that a stranger wouldn't question it.
But I had never signed anything like this.
Not ever.
"Where did you get this?" I said.
Marcus didn't answer right away.
He straightened his jacket cuff, slow and deliberate, like we had all the time in the world.
"It was filed six weeks ago," he said.
"Notarized.
Witnessed.
Completely legal on paper."
"It's not my signature."
"Prove it."
Amanda hadn't moved from the spot where she'd been standing.
Her face had gone from pale to something harder.
She was watching Marcus now, not me.
Waiting for him to handle it.
"Amanda." I turned to her.
"How long has this been planned?"
She said nothing.
"How long have you been meeting with him while I was at work?"
Still nothing.
Sophie tugged at my sleeve.
"Daddy.
She used to talk on the phone in the car.
She thought I was asleep."
Amanda's jaw tightened.
"Sophie, that is enough."
"Don't speak to her." My voice came out flat.
I hadn't planned it.
It just came out that way.
Marcus took one step forward.
"I'd suggest you lower your voice.
You're in a public venue.
Sixty people downstairs.
A scene won't help you."
"You forged my signature on a property document and you're giving me advice about scenes."
"I didn't forge anything." He held my gaze.
"Someone who had your power of attorney signed it."
The floor felt like it shifted.
"I never gave anyone power of attorney."
"You did," he said.
"Eight months ago.
Check your files."
I looked at Amanda.
She looked at the wall behind me.
Eight months ago she had asked me to sign a stack of insurance forms after my father's estate was being settled.
I had been exhausted.
I had trusted her.
I had signed where she pointed without reading every page.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
"You hid it in the insurance forms," I said.
She didn't deny it.
That was the moment I understood that the woman standing three feet away from me was not someone I had ever actually known.
Marcus folded his hands.
"Here's what I'd suggest.
Walk back downstairs.
Tell your guests the ceremony is postponed.
In forty-eight hours, we complete the transfer quietly, you keep the contents of the house, and this stays between the three of us."
"Or?"
"Or this becomes very complicated.
For you.
And for her." He glanced at Sophie.
Sophie pressed closer against the wall.
I looked at my daughter's face.
Four years old, still in her flower-girl dress, shoes slightly too big, holding a phone she had found because she had been curious and small and in the wrong place at the right time.
She had saved me.
She didn't even fully understand how.
"Get away from my daughter," I said.
Marcus smiled.
It didn't reach his eyes.
"Think carefully."
"I am thinking carefully." I pulled out my own phone.
"I'm thinking about how quickly a notarized document falls apart when the original signatory disputes it in writing, requests a forensic handwriting analysis, and files a police report for fraud within the same hour."
The smile stayed on his face, but something behind it went very still.
"You have forty-eight hours," he repeated.
May you like
"I have a phone," I said.
"And I'm already dialing."
