Chapter 4: Eight Months of Lies
The message on Maya's phone was longer than Daniel's first one.
Marcus read it in silence.
His expression didn't change while he read.
That stillness — no flinching, no reaction — was somehow more alarming than anything that had come before it.
When he finished, he set the phone back on the table and turned it face-up so the screen stayed visible.
"He wants to know if Arthur signed the paper yet," Marcus said.
Arthur's head came up slowly from the sofa.
"What paper?" Marcus asked.
He wasn't asking Daniel.
He was asking his wife.
Maya said nothing.
"There's a paper." Marcus moved to the coffee table and picked up Maya's phone again, scrolling back through the message thread.
His jaw tightened as he read.
"There's a paper that Daniel seems to think my father was going to sign today.
Before I got home." He looked up.
"What paper, Maya?"
"It was nothing."
"It has a dollar amount in it." He turned the phone so she could see her own messages.
"This one, right here, from you, six days ago.
You told him the number.
You told him Arthur would do it once you—" He stopped reading.
Set the phone down.
"Once you convinced me that my father couldn't be trusted in this house."
Arthur spoke very quietly.
"She brought papers here two weeks ago.
Said they were insurance documents.
Said you had asked me to sign them."
Marcus turned to his father.
"I never asked you to sign anything."
"I know that now." Arthur's voice was steady but his hands were not.
They rested on his knees, both of them trembling slightly.
"I didn't sign them.
Something felt wrong.
I told her I wanted to read them first, that I'd ask you about them when you came home.
That was when she—" He gestured toward the room around them.
Toward the carpet where Maya had been lying.
"That was when today started."
The room went very still.
Marcus looked at Maya for a long moment without speaking.
"Those documents," he said finally.
"What were they actually for?"
Maya's chin lifted.
"You never paid attention to the finances.
You never once—"
"What were they for."
"Your father's name is on an account." Her voice changed.
The softness was entirely gone.
What replaced it was something precise and controlled.
"His name has been on that account since before we got married.
Before I was part of this family.
And the account is worth—"
"I know what it's worth," Marcus said.
"It's my family's money.
My grandfather set it up.
My father's name is on it because my father is the trustee." He paused.
"Were those papers a transfer of trust authority?"
She said nothing.
"You were going to get my father to sign over control of the trust." Marcus's voice was very quiet now.
"To you."
"To both of us," she said.
"To our future.
You never would have agreed if I'd asked you directly.
You don't think about money the way I do.
You don't think about security, about what happens if—"
"Stop." He held up one hand.
"Don't dress this up."
"I'm trying to explain—"
"You're trying to justify it.
There's a difference." He picked up his own phone from the table.
"Eight months of messages with your ex-boyfriend.
A plan to get my elderly father alone in this house.
Fake documents.
A staged scene designed to make me believe my father attacked you." His voice finally cracked — just slightly, just once, on the last word.
"And you want to explain to me that this was about our future."
Maya took a step toward him.
He stepped back.
Her expression flickered — surprise, then something colder.
"You're going to regret this, Marcus."
He looked at her.
"I already do," he said.
"Just not the way you mean."
His thumb hovered over his phone screen.
"Who are you calling?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"Marcus.
Who are you calling?"
The line connected.
He put it on speaker and set the phone on the table between them.
A woman's voice answered on the second ring.
"Hargrove and Associates."
"This is Marcus Webb," he said.
"I need to speak with Helen Hargrove.
It's urgent.
It concerns a matter of fraud and elder financial @buse."
May you like
The word landed in the room like a door slamming shut.
Maya's face went white.
