I stared at her, feeling completely hollow. The late nights he claimed he was working mandatory overtime at the logistics firm. The sudden weekend “business trips” to regional conferences that never seemed to yield any promotions. I had trusted him blindly.
“What exactly did he do?” I asked, my voice a brittle whisper.
Morrison handed me a printed spreadsheet. “He has been aggressively siphoning money from your joint accounts for over sixteen months. Your mortgage, which you believed was on auto-pay, is three months in arrears. The bank was preparing a foreclosure notice. Furthermore, he used your social security number to open seven different high-limit credit cards in your name without your knowledge. He maxed every single one of them out at casinos across three different state lines.”
The numbers on the page swam before my eyes. “How much?”
“The credit card debt alone totals eighty-nine thousand dollars.”
My stomach bottomed out. Every single cent I had earned from my rigorous freelance consulting work, money I had proudly deposited into what I thought was our untouchable savings account, was gone.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” she continued softly. “We found a secondary trail. Your joint checking account shows fifty-eight separate, authorized transfers to an external account held in your mother-in-law’s name. Over the last fourteen months, he transferred roughly forty-two thousand dollars to Deborah.”
Nausea violently rolled through my gut. Deborah’s endless Nordstrom shopping sprees. The luxury spa weekends. The imported leather handbags. They were all paid for with my money, the money meant for my children’s future, while she simultaneously mocked my “cheap” maternity clothes and “sensible” car.
“There’s one final piece,” Morrison said, handing me a copy of a legal document. “He took out a second mortgage on your home for one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. He forged your signature on the closing documents, which escalates this to federal wire and bank fraud.”
I did the math in my head, the numbers echoing like gunshots. Eighty-nine thousand. Forty-two thousand. One hundred and fifteen thousand.
Nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Gone.
“We subpoenaed his burner phone—found it hidden in the spare tire compartment of his SUV,” Morrison added, her tone turning gravely serious. “He owed massive, unpaid markers to some highly dangerous individuals connected to an offshore betting syndicate. We found threatening text messages demanding payment. They were tracking his movements. They knew where you lived.” She gestured to the hallway. “That is why there is a uniformed officer stationed outside your door. You and your babies were his collateral.”
The room seemed to tilt sharply on its axis. My husband hadn’t just abandoned me to go shopping. He had sold me to the wolves to save his own skin, and when I inconvenienced him with the medical bills of childbirth, he tried to silence me with his fists.
My phone, which Lauren had recovered from my purse, suddenly vibrated on the bedside table. The caller ID flashed a blocked number. Lauren reached for it, but I shook my head and answered it, putting it on speaker.
“This is all your fault, you selfish bitch,” Vanessa’s voice hissed through the speaker, venomous and sharp. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to our family? Dad had to hire a bail bondsman, but the judge denied bail because of the assault charge. Travis is sitting in a cage because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut and take a hit like a woman!”
