Work.
Groceries.
Cooking.
Walking.
Reading.
Sleeping.
Sometimes Matthew and I had coffee.
Sometimes we talked in the hallway.
Sometimes we didn’t see each other at all.
There was no pressure.
No games.
No jealousy.
No silent treatment.
No wondering where I stood.
It was peaceful.
Almost frighteningly peaceful.
Then one Friday afternoon, I received an email from an unknown address.
The subject line contained only my name.
PAULA.
I opened it.
There was one sentence.
You need to know what really happened between Adrian and Sophia.
My heart stopped.
Below it was an attachment.
A photograph.
I stared at it.
Then I opened the image.
It was taken at the party one month earlier.
The night everything had changed.
But it wasn’t the picture I remembered.
This one showed something I hadn’t seen.
Adrian and Sophia standing outside behind the house.
And Sophia was holding something.
A small envelope.
My name was written across it.
I zoomed in.
My hands began to shake.
Because suddenly I understood.
The night I had walked away…
Hadn’t been the beginning of the betrayal.
It had been the moment someone wanted me to see.
Someone had wanted me to leave.
And there was a reason.
A reason Adrian had never told me.
I looked at the attachment again.
Then at the sender’s name.
My blood ran cold.
Because the email hadn’t come from Sophia.
It hadn’t come from Adrian.
It had come from someone whose name I hadn’t seen in three years.
Someone from Adrian’s past.
Someone who knew a secret I had never known.
And beneath the photograph was one final sentence:
If you want the truth, don’t trust Adrian. Don’t trust Sophia. And whatever you do, don’t go back to the apartment.
PART 4
For almost a full minute, I couldn’t breathe.
I stared at the email.
Then at the photograph.
Then back at the name of the sender.
Daniel Mercer.
I hadn’t heard that name in three years.
Daniel was Adrian’s older cousin.
And, as far as I knew, he had moved overseas shortly after Adrian and I started dating.
He had never liked me.
Not openly.
He had always been polite.
Too polite.
The kind of polite that felt like someone was measuring you.
I remembered the first time we met.
Adrian had introduced us at a family dinner.
“Paula, this is Daniel.”
Daniel had shaken my hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.”
He had looked at me for a second longer than necessary.
Then he had smiled.
“Take care of him.”
At the time, I thought it was a harmless family comment.
Now I wondered what he had meant.
My phone vibrated.
Another email.
This time, there was no attachment.
Just a message.
Don’t reply to this email. Someone may be watching Adrian’s old accounts. Meet me tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the public library downtown. Come alone.
I read it three times.
My first instinct was to ignore it.
My second was to block the sender.
My third was the one that won.
I wanted the truth.
Not because I wanted Adrian back.
That part of me was gone.
I wanted to know what had happened to the last three years of my life.
Why had Sophia been given an envelope with my name?
Why had Daniel suddenly contacted me?
And why had he specifically told me not to trust Adrian?
I looked toward the window.
Across the hallway, Matthew’s apartment door was closed.
I almost knocked.
But I stopped.
I didn’t want anyone else involved.
Not yet.
So I went to bed.
Or at least I tried.
I barely slept.
The next morning, I arrived at the library at 9:48.
Daniel was already there.
He looked older.
His hair was shorter.
There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
He stood when he saw me.
“Paula.”
I stopped several feet away.
“You have ten minutes.”
He nodded.
“That’s fair.”
“What happened?”
He pulled a folder from his bag.
“I should have told you three years ago.”
I didn’t take it.
“Tell me now.”
He looked down.
“Adrian wasn’t supposed to meet Sophia that night.”
“I know.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You don’t.”
He opened the folder.
Inside were copies of bank statements.
Emails.
Screenshots.
Contracts.
And photographs.
My stomach tightened.
“What is this?”
“Adrian’s business account.”
I frowned.
“Adrian doesn’t own a business.”
Daniel looked at me.
“That’s what he wanted you to believe.”
I sat down.
He placed the first document in front of me.
It showed several transfers.
Large amounts.
Five thousand dollars.
Ten thousand.
Twenty-five thousand.
Then another.
I looked at the dates.
Some of them went back two years.
“What’s this?”
“Money Adrian took from a joint investment account.”
I shook my head.
“We never had a joint investment account.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
“You did.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“You signed the paperwork.”
My heart dropped.
“What paperwork?”
“The apartment purchase.”
I couldn’t speak.
Daniel continued.
“Do you remember when Adrian told you the apartment you lived in was rented under his name?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t.”
I stared at him.
“The property was purchased.”
“By who?”
He slid another document toward me.
My name was on it.
PAULA LANE.
My hands went cold.
Next to my name was Adrian’s.
“That’s impossible.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Three years ago, Adrian convinced you to sign documents under the excuse that they were related to a lease renewal and utilities.”
I remembered.
I remembered the night.
Adrian had brought home a stack of papers.
“Just sign here, babe.”
“What is this?”
“Apartment stuff.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“Neither do I. The landlord sent it.”
I had trusted him.
I signed.
My signature was there.
On a property purchase agreement.
I looked at Daniel.
“What happened to the property?”
“Adrian sold it eight months ago.”
My mouth went dry.
“Without me?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He forged your signature on the sale documents.”
I stared at the papers.
Everything suddenly felt unreal.
The apartment.
The rent.
The bills.
The way Adrian always said the place was “his responsibility.”
I had believed he was being generous.
He had actually been hiding ownership.
“Why?”
Daniel took a breath.
“Because he was in debt.”
I looked at him.
“How much?”
“Almost two hundred thousand dollars.”
I laughed bitterly.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It will.”
He pulled out another document.
Sophia’s name appeared.
My chest tightened.
“She knew.”
Daniel nodded.
“Sophia knew about the money.”
“How?”
“She was involved.”
I stared at him.
“Involved how?”
Daniel leaned forward.
“She helped Adrian move money through a company registered under her name.”
I felt sick.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because Adrian promised her something.”
“What?”
Daniel’s eyes met mine.
“The property.”
I froze.
“The apartment?”
“Yes.”
He placed another document on the table.
It was a transfer agreement.
Sophia’s name appeared as the beneficiary.
My hands began shaking.
“So the Instagram post…”
“Wasn’t just about humiliating you.”
I looked at him.
“What was it?”
“It was a message.”
“To who?”
“Sophia.”
I stared at the picture in my phone.
Adrian’s hand on her face.
The caption.
“For the rest of my life, as long as you’re here, I’m complete.”
Daniel said quietly:
“He wanted her to believe he had chosen her.”
I swallowed.
“Because she was demanding the property?”
“Because she had started threatening him.”
“What did she know?”
Daniel closed the folder.
“Everything.”
I left the library feeling like the ground was moving beneath me.
I didn’t cry.
I couldn’t.
My mind was too busy putting together three years of memories.
The arguments.
The unexplained money.
The sudden secrecy.
The times Adrian had told me I was “overthinking.”
The nights he had accused me of being jealous.
The endless reassurance that Sophia meant nothing.
Maybe I had been asking the wrong question.
I had always asked:
Does Adrian love Sophia?
The real question had been:
What were Adrian and Sophia hiding from me?
When I reached my apartment, Matthew was standing outside.
He looked at my face.
“What happened?”
I shook my head.
“I need to sit down.”
He stepped aside.
“Come in.”
I entered his apartment.
It was cleaner than mine.
Books everywhere.
A small plant near the window.
A gray couch.
He brought me water.
I sat down.
He didn’t ask questions.
Eventually, I told him everything.
The property.
The money.
Sophia.
Daniel.
The documents.
When I finished, Matthew was quiet.
Then he said:
“You know what I think?”
“What?”
“You should talk to a lawyer before talking to Adrian.”
I looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because if what Daniel gave you is real, Adrian isn’t trying to get you back.”
I swallowed.
“Then what is he trying to do?”
Matthew looked directly at me.
“He’s trying to find out how much you know.”
That night, I hired a lawyer.
Her name was Rachel Bennett.
She reviewed the documents Daniel had given me.
For three hours, she said almost nothing.
Then she closed the folder.
“Paula.”
“Yes?”
“You may have a serious case.”
My heart pounded.
“Against Adrian?”
“Against Adrian and potentially others.”
“What about the property?”
“If your signature was forged on the sale documents, we can challenge the transfer.”
“Can I get the apartment back?”
She shook her head.
“Possibly. But don’t focus on the apartment yet.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s something more important.”
She turned the page.
“The money.”
I stared at her.
“How much?”
“Based on these records, your financial exposure could be much larger than you think.”
I felt dizzy.
“How much?”
She looked at me.
“Close to three hundred thousand dollars.”
I closed my eyes.
Three hundred thousand.
That was more money than I could imagine.
Rachel continued.
“And there’s another problem.”
“What?”
“These documents show Adrian may have used your identity to open accounts.”
My eyes opened.
“What?”
“Credit lines. Investment accounts. A business registration.”
I shook my head.
“I never agreed to any of that.”
“I believe you.”
She paused.
“But we need evidence.”
“What kind?”
“Everything.”
For the next two weeks, my life became paperwork.
Bank records.
Credit reports.
Old emails.
Phone records.
Property documents.
Tax documents.
Everything.
And the more we found, the worse it became.
Adrian had opened a small consulting company using my name as a secondary contact.
He had used my old phone number.
My old address.
My signature.
He had even listed me as a financial partner.
I had never seen any of it.
Then Rachel found something that changed everything.
An account had been opened eighteen months earlier.
A joint account.
My name.
Adrian’s name.
The balance was almost zero.
But the transaction history showed thousands of dollars moving through it.
I stared at the statement.
There was one recurring payment.
A company called Cross Financial Consulting.
Cross.
Sophia’s last name.
Rachel looked at me.
“Do you know this company?”
“No.”
She nodded.
“Then we’re going to subpoena their records.”
Three days later, Adrian called me.
Not my old number.
My new number.
I stared at the screen.
He had somehow found it.
I didn’t answer.
He called again.
Then again.
Then a text appeared.
ADRIAN:
Paula, please. We need to talk.
Another message.
ADRIAN:
I know you left because you were hurt.
Another.
ADRIAN:
I made mistakes.
Then:
ADRIAN:
But what you’re doing now is going too far.
I stared at that sentence.
I almost laughed.
He had finally admitted it.
Not that he had betrayed me.
Not that he had lied.
Only that I had gone too far.
I handed the phone to Rachel.
She read the messages.
“Don’t respond.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
Then another message arrived.
ADRIAN:
You don’t understand what Sophia did.
Rachel looked at me.
I looked back.
“Now that’s interesting.”
The next morning, Sophia contacted me.
Not through Instagram.
Not through email.
She came to my office.
I was leaving for lunch when I saw her standing across the street.
She looked different.
No glamorous photos.
No perfect makeup.
No confident smile.
She looked exhausted.
“Paula.”
I stopped.
“What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”
She swallowed.
“Please.”
I should have walked away.
Instead, I said:
“Five minutes.”
We went into a small café.
Sophia sat across from me.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she whispered:
“I didn’t know how far he would go.”
I stared at her.
“Neither did I.”
She looked down.
“I never wanted you hurt.”
I laughed quietly.
“You were in a photograph lying on my boyfriend’s chest.”
“I know.”
“You knew about the property.”
She looked up.
“Yes.”
“You knew about the accounts.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“You knew he used my signature.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Yes.”
I felt something inside me harden.
“Then don’t tell me you didn’t want me hurt.”