Chapter 9 - THE KEY HE STILL HAD
I changed passwords until the letters blurred.
Email first. Then banking. Then medical records, cloud storage, phone service, everything I could remember.
Dad brought me a sandwich.
I took one bite and put it down.
“He still knows things.”
“We’ll keep closing doors.”
“What if we miss one?”
Dad didn’t answer right away.
“Then we deal with that door when we find it.”
Mara helped me contact the hospital about the attempted access. I updated my privacy preferences and removed Ryan wherever I could.
Then my friend Tessa came over with two bags of maternity clothes.
“You look like you’re about to apologize,” she said.
“I haven’t called you in forever.”
“I noticed.”
“I know.”
She sat beside me.
“He told me you thought I was stupid.”
Tessa’s face changed.
“He told me you needed space because I was jealous of your marriage.”
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then she opened one of the bags.
“Well. We can hate him after you try on these pants.”
I laughed.
It came out rusty, but it was real.
That afternoon, Daniel called with an update.
The trustee had found irregular requests made through contact details Ryan controlled. Some distributions had already gone to an account linked to a property company.
“How much?”
He told me.
I pressed my palm against the kitchen counter.
It wasn’t all the money.
It was enough to change a life.
“Can we get it back?”
“We’re tracing it. Some may be recoverable. I don’t want to promise more than we know.”
Dad stood in the doorway, listening.
After the call, I told him the amount.
He closed his eyes.
“I should have—”
“No.”
He looked up.
“I’m not doing that with you,” I said. “We’re not spending every day listing what we should have seen.”
He nodded slowly.
“All right.”
Then Tessa came downstairs carrying my old tablet.
“I found this in the closet. Do you still use it?”
“No.”
“Because it’s getting messages.”
The screen lit up in her hand.
Ryan’s account was still signed in.
May you like
A message from Martin appeared.
We have a bigger problem. She kept the original.
