Chapter 8
Maya answered my email first.
One line.
Do not call me unless you are away from windows.
My hands went cold.
I met her in a quiet law office with Diana and Detective Ortiz present.
Maya was thirty-four.
Elegant.
Exhausted.
She looked at my bruised lip and said, “Florence?”
“Jonathan.”
She nodded.
“He learned from her.”
Maya had been engaged to Caleb.
Not Jonathan.
Florence had tested her with cleaning, cooking, humiliation, and money demands.
When Maya refused, Caleb broke her wrist.
Harold notarized fake settlement papers.
Florence threatened to ruin Maya’s immigration status, even though Maya was born in Ohio.
“They don’t need facts,” Maya said. “They just need fear.”
Rachel joined by video.
She had been Jonathan’s fiancée before me.
Florence accused her of stealing jewelry.
Jonathan slapped her in front of the family.
Harold notarized a confession.
Rachel paid twenty thousand dollars to make it stop.
Then Bethany appeared on screen with a little boy beside her.
Jonathan’s son.
I stopped breathing.
“He told me he had no children.”
Bethany smiled sadly.
“He told the court I was unstable.”
Her son, Owen, was six.
Jonathan had not seen him in four years.
But he had used Bethany’s name on business documents.
Diana leaned forward.
“What documents?”
Bethany opened a folder.
NexoCloud’s earliest incorporation papers.
Jonathan had stolen her inheritance to start the company.
My chest tightened.
This was not a bad marriage.
This was a family system.
Florence identified women.
Jonathan and Caleb charmed them.
Harold forged the papers.
Then they broke anyone who resisted.
I looked at Maya, Rachel, and Bethany.
“Will you testify?”
May you like
Bethany looked at Owen.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m tired of hiding.”
