Chapter 3: The Woman With No Name in the Room
Her name was Sasha.
She told me that herself, standing in my entryway with the baby still pressed to her chest, while Ethan stared at Patricia and Patricia stared at the floor.
"I didn't know she was still here," Sasha said.
She meant me.
"Patricia told me you'd already left."
"I haven't left," I said.
"I own this house."
Sasha looked at Patricia then.
Something shifted in her face — not anger yet, but the early shape of it.
"You told me she signed everything over."
Patricia finally spoke.
Her voice came out thin and careful, like she was testing ice.
"I told you what I knew at the time."
"You told me the house would be in my name by the end of the month." Sasha's voice cracked on the last word.
She pulled the baby closer.
"You told me Ethan was going to marry me."
Ethan made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
"Were you?" I asked him.
He looked at me.
Then at Sasha.
Then at the formal notice still sitting on the table in front of him.
"It wasn't — that was never the actual plan."
"What was the actual plan?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
I turned to Sasha.
"Sit down.
Please."
She hesitated, then lowered herself onto the edge of the sofa, the baby balanced carefully across her knees.
The baby was asleep.
Small and entirely unaware of the room it had been carried into.
I sat across from her.
"How much money did Patricia tell you Ethan had access to?"
Sasha named a figure.
I kept my face still.
The number was nearly twice what Ethan actually earned.
It was, however, very close to the amount that had quietly disappeared from our joint savings account over the past fourteen months.
Ethan's chair scraped back.
"I need to make a phone call."
"Sit down, Ethan."
He stopped.
I hadn't raised my voice.
I hadn't needed to.
Something in the room had shifted, and he felt it the same way I did.
"The formal notice in front of you," I said, "is a property claim notification.
It confirms that this house is registered solely in my name and that any transfer, sale, or occupancy claim made without my written consent is legally void." I paused.
"The one Patricia is holding is a fraud referral letter.
My solicitor filed it this morning with the financial crimes unit."
Patricia's head came up.
"You can't —"
"It references fourteen months of unauthorized transfers from a joint account into a private account registered in your name." I looked at her steadily.
"Would you like me to read the account number aloud, or do you already know it?"
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had heard in years.
Sasha looked from Patricia to me.
"She told me that money was Ethan's inheritance.
She said his grandmother had left it to him and he was just moving it somewhere safe."
"Ethan's grandmother is alive," I said.
"She came to our wedding."
Sasha closed her eyes.
The baby stirred, made a small sound, and settled again.
"I want to ask you something," I said to Sasha, "and I need you to answer honestly.
Did Patricia ever ask you to sign anything?"
Sasha opened her eyes.
"Once.
About three months ago.
She said it was a tenancy pre-agreement.
In case the house transfer was delayed."
"Do you still have it?"
"It's in my flat.
In a folder she gave me."
I nodded slowly.
I already had a reasonable idea of what that document said.
And it was not a tenancy pre-agreement.
Ethan stood up again.
This time I let him.
He walked to the window and stood with his back to the room.
"Patricia," he said quietly.
"What did you do?"
She didn't answer him either.
Outside, a second car had pulled up behind the first.
Two people stepped out.
One of them was my solicitor.
The other was someone I had called three hours ago, before the fever had climbed back and before Ethan had come home with his papers and his certainty.
The second person was a detective constable from the financial crimes unit.
They were walking toward the front door.
Ethan saw the car.
He turned from the window and looked at me with something I hadn't seen on his face in a very long time.
May you like
It took me a moment to recognize it.
It was fear.
