Chapter 2 - THE DEED WITH MY NAME ON IT
For several seconds, I could not understand what I was looking at.
My name.
My address.
My condo.
My signature.
Everything looked real enough to frighten me.
But I knew it was false.
“I never signed this.”
Ruiz looked at me.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor suddenly found her voice.
“It was only a draft.”
The officer beside Ruiz looked at her.
“Drafts usually don’t contain notarized signatures.”
Eleanor stopped talking.
I looked at the notary block.
Martin Bellamy.
The family attorney.
The same man who had smiled at me during Christmas dinners for eleven years.
The same man who once told me marriage made property “simpler.”
My stomach turned.
Ruiz kept reading.
Transfer date.
The following Monday.
Four days away.
Exactly one day after the family had planned for Eleanor to move into my condo.
This dinner had not been a discussion.
It had been the last attempt to obtain my voluntary agreement before they used paperwork they had already prepared.
Then Ruiz found another document.
MONTHLY FAMILY SUPPORT AGREEMENT.
$2,800.
My supposed signature appeared there too.
The exact amount Charles had announced over dinner.
Nothing they said had been spontaneous.
The condo.
The moving date.
The monthly payment.
They had already written the future.
Tonight was supposed to make me accept it.
I looked at Adrian.
“How long have you known?”
His face hardened.
“Claire, you’re injured.”
“That is not an answer.”
“We should talk later.”
“How long?”
He glanced at his father.
There it was again.
The same reflex.
Look toward the family before answering his wife.
I laughed bitterly.
“That long.”
Ruiz opened another folder.
MAYA HARRINGTON.
Maya was still standing near the basement door.
She stared at it.
Her hands began to shake.
Lucas whispered.
“Maya, don’t.”
She turned toward him.
“Why?”
“So we can keep pretending?”
He looked away.
Ruiz opened her file.
Inside were loan guarantees.
A transfer of her inheritance account.
A property lien.
And a handwritten note.
SIGNED AFTER CELLAR DISCUSSION.
I looked at Maya.
“What happened in that basement?”
She closed her eyes.
Then she told me.
Four years earlier, Charles needed Maya to personally guarantee a seven-million-dollar loan for the family’s vineyard expansion.
The money she had inherited from her father was protected.
She refused.
So Eleanor invited her to dinner.
Adrian came.
Charles came.
Lucas came.
Exactly like tonight.
They pressured her for hours.
When she still refused, Charles told the children’s nanny to take Maya’s kids upstairs.
May you like
Then Adrian walked Maya into the wine cellar.
And locked the door.
