Chapter 3: What Richard Prepared
The bathroom door was still closed.
I could hear the shower running.
I sat on the edge of the bed and kept my face pointed at the wall between the suite and the adjoining room, as if I could see through it to where Dad and Rebecca were standing over that envelope.
Three minutes passed.
Then a soft knock — two taps, barely audible — came from the connecting door.
I crossed the room and opened it an inch.
Rebecca held the envelope's contents in her gloved hand.
She had come prepared for a wedding and apparently also for evidence handling.
I filed that away.
"Come look at this," she said quietly.
I slipped through the gap.
Dad was at the small writing desk, the documents spread flat under the lamp.
His reading glasses were on.
His jaw was set in the way it got when he was doing math he didn't like the answer to.
"What is it?" I whispered.
Rebecca set a single page in front of me.
It was a property transfer agreement.
My name was at the top.
The Savannah condo address was in the second paragraph.
And at the bottom, on the signature line marked GRANTOR, someone had already printed my name in neat block letters.
"I didn't sign this."
"No," Rebecca said.
"But someone practiced your signature on the back of the envelope."
I turned it over.
There were six attempts.
Each one slightly closer to mine.
My stomach dropped.
"They were going to forge it," I said.
"They were going to have you sign it tonight," Rebecca said.
"The version in the envelope is the real one.
The version Owen showed you at the kitchen table — the one you already signed — transferred the condo into your name, yes.
But it also contained a clause in paragraph nine that allowed the original purchaser to reclaim the property within eighteen months upon documented proof of marital incompatibility."
"Owen is the original purchaser."
"Owen's LLC is the original purchaser.
Which means it isn't even his personal asset.
It belongs to a company.
And the company's registered agent is—"
She pointed to a line near the bottom of the second page.
Richard Hale.
Attorney at Law.
Dad took his glasses off.
"Richard isn't just a name on a document," he said.
"I had Rebecca run him while you were keeping Owen occupied.
Richard Hale has handled three previous property transfers for the Mercer family in the last nine years.
Two of them involved women Owen dated before you."
The shower was still running.
I looked at the connecting door.
"How many times has he done this?"
"At least twice that we can trace," Rebecca said.
"Both women signed documents they didn't fully understand.
Both lost property.
Neither pursued legal action."
"Why not?"
Rebecca set down the second page.
"Because Lorraine visited both of them afterward.
We don't know exactly what she said.
But neither woman filed anything."
The shower shut off.
The silence landed like a weight.
I moved back through the connecting door without being told.
I sat on the bed.
I folded my hands in my lap.
When the bathroom door opened and Owen came out in a hotel robe, toweling his hair, I was exactly where he expected me to be.
"Sorry," he said.
"Long day."
"It really was," I said.
He sat beside me and reached for the envelope on the nightstand.
"You know, you can open it tonight if you want.
I don't mind."
I looked at the envelope.
The same envelope that had a practiced version of my signature on the back.
"You said tomorrow," I told him.
"I can wait."
He smiled.
Kissed my temple.
"That's what I love about you, Mara.
You're patient."
I smiled back.
And I thought: *Not patient.
Just finished being fooled.*
He fell asleep within the hour.
I lay beside him in my wedding dress, staring at the ceiling, listening to the last of the reception music fade out below.
At some point, I heard Rebecca's voice through the wall — low, steady, professional — and I knew she was already making calls.
When Owen's phone lit up on the dresser at 2 a.m., I saw the name before it went dark.
Richard.
I didn't move.
I didn't touch it.
May you like
I just noted the time.
Rebecca would want to know.
