Chapter 8: What She Said Before the End
Sophia called him that evening.
He let it ring the first time.
The second time, he picked up.
"I need to talk to you," she said.
"Not through lawyers.
Just us."
"My attorney has advised me not to—"
"I know what your attorney advised.
I'm asking you anyway." Her voice was different from any version he'd heard before — not the warmth she performed, not the coldness he'd seen through the glass.
Something flatter.
More tired.
"Twenty minutes.
That's all."
He met her at the house.
She was sitting at the kitchen table when he arrived, not the living room — he noticed that.
The documents were gone.
The glass table was bare.
She had made coffee.
She didn't offer him any.
He sat down across from her.
"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me," she said.
"I know what I did.
I knew what I was doing when I was doing it."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I want you to understand something that isn't in any of those documents." She looked at him steadily.
"I grew up with nothing.
I mean nothing — not the kind people say when they mean they didn't have luxuries.
I mean the kind where the lights go off and you eat whatever's in the cabinet and your mother cries in the bathroom so you can't hear her." She stopped.
"I told myself for a long time that if I ever got close to real money, I would never let it be taken from me again.
That I would protect myself before anyone could take it."
"By taking it from someone else."
"Yes." She didn't flinch from it.
"I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like you made me the person who hurt you before I ever did anything to you."
She was quiet for a moment.
"That's probably true."
"Sophia." He leaned forward.
"I would have helped you.
If you had told me — any of it — I would have helped you."
"I know." Her voice didn't break, but something shifted behind her eyes.
"That's the part I couldn't let myself believe.
Because if I believed it and I was wrong, I had nothing left."
Daniel sat with that for a moment.
"Marcus," he said.
"How long have you known him?"
"Eight years."
"Did you love him?"
She looked at the table.
"I don't think I know how to answer that."
"Try."
"He made me feel safe in the only way I understood safety.
Which was having a plan.
Having control." She paused.
"That's not love.
I know that now."
Daniel stood up.
He walked to the counter and stood with his back to her for a moment.
"The financial crimes unit is opening a formal investigation," he said.
"Into Marcus.
Into the asset transfer scheme.
Your name is in the filing, Sophia.
I couldn't remove it even if I wanted to."
"I know."
"Your attorney needs to prepare you for what's coming."
"She already has."
He turned around.
She was still sitting at the table, both hands flat on the surface, looking at nothing in particular.
"Was any of it real?" he asked.
"Any part of the three years."
She looked up at him.
For the first time since he'd come back through that front door, she looked like someone he recognized.
"Some of it," she said quietly.
"More than I planned."
He nodded once.
He picked up his keys from the counter.
"Goodbye, Sophia."
She didn't answer.
He walked out of the kitchen, through the entry hall, and out the front door for the second time in two days.
This time, he didn't look back at the house either.
May you like
But it felt different — not like leaving in shock, not like retreating.
Like closing a door that had been open too long.
