Chapter 2
The world tilted under my feet.
I stared at the photo until my eyes burned.
Ryan—my Ryan, the man who’d held our daughter the day she was born, who’d cried at our wedding, who’d promised to love me forever—was standing on a beach in Hawaii, his arm around a woman with soft brown hair. Between them, two kids grinned into the camera. A boy and a girl.
The date stamp read June 14, 2018.
We’d been married on May 20, 2015.
I looked up at him.
“Who are they?”
Ryan’s mouth opened and closed. No sound came out.
Vanessa stepped back, her smile gone. “You said you were single when we met. You said your wife was dead.”
Ryan spun on her. “Shut up, Vanessa.”
Mr. Crawford closed the folder. His voice was cold as steel. “His real name is Ryan Cole. He’s been running from the law for twelve years. Bigamy. Wire fraud. Embezzlement. And you, Mrs. Bennett, are the third woman he’s targeted.”
Third.
I swayed. The younger man from the SUV stepped forward to steady me, but I waved him off.
“Targeted?”
“Your parents left you a two-hundred-million-dollar oil trust when they died in that car crash outside Austin. The one Ryan told you was a tragic accident.” Crawford paused, letting the words sink in. “He married you to get access to it. He’s been siphoning money out for eight years. Almost forty million so far.”
Forty million.
The money I’d thought was tied up in investments. The money I’d never touched because I’d trusted Ryan to handle our finances. The money I’d planned to use for Lila’s college, for the animal shelter we’d talked about building, for the life we were supposed to build together.
I looked at the mansion behind us. The marble floors. The crystal chandelier I’d picked out when I was seven months pregnant. The nursery we’d painted pale yellow together.
None of it was real.
“Where is my daughter?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“Inside,” Ryan said quickly. “She’s doing her homework. Emily, let me explain—”
I turned and ran for the front door. My legs burned. My cheek throbbed where he’d hit me. I could hear him calling my name behind me, but I didn’t stop.
I burst into the house. Lila was at the kitchen table, her backpack open, coloring a picture of a horse. She looked up, her big blue eyes widening.
“Mommy? Why are you crying?”
I dropped to my knees and pulled her into my arms. I held her so tight I was afraid I’d hurt her, but I couldn’t let go. She smelled like strawberry shampoo and the apple juice she’d spilled on her shirt that morning. She was real. She was the only real thing in my entire life.
“Mommy, you’re squeezing me.”
I loosened my hold just enough to look at her. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
Mr. Crawford walked into the kitchen. The two men from the SUV stood by the front door, blocking Ryan from coming in. I could hear him yelling outside, screaming that Crawford was kidnapping his family.
“Mrs. Bennett,” Crawford said gently. “We need to get you and your daughter out of here. Now. He’s dangerous. We’ve been watching him for six months. We didn’t want to move until we had enough evidence, but when we got the call that he’d hit you… we couldn’t wait.”
“Where are we going?” Lila asked, her voice small. She’d never seen men in suits in our house before. She’d never heard her dad yell like that.
“To a safe place,” I told her. I brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Just for a little while. Okay? We’re going to have an adventure.”
She nodded, but her lip was trembling. She grabbed her favorite stuffed rabbit from the table and clutched it to her chest.
I stood up. I didn’t pack anything. I didn’t need clothes or jewelry or any of the things in this house. All of it was bought with stolen money. All of it was a lie.
I walked out the front door, holding Lila’s hand so tight my knuckles turned white.
Ryan was standing on the porch, his face red with rage. Two of Crawford’s men held him back.
“Emily, you can’t do this! She’s my daughter! I’ll call the police! I’ll tell them you kidnapped her!”
I stopped. I looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time in eleven years. I didn’t see the man I’d married. I saw a stranger. A liar. A thief.
“Go ahead,” I said. My voice was steady now. “Call them. Tell them your name is Ryan Cole. Tell them about your other wife. Tell them about the forty million you stole from my family. I’ll wait.”
His face went white. He stopped struggling.
I got into the back of the SUV with Lila. She curled into my side, her rabbit pressed to her face. Crawford got in the front seat. The driver pulled away from the mansion. I didn’t look back.
We drove for forty minutes, heading west out of Dallas, until we turned onto a long gravel road lined with oak trees. At the end of the road was a big stone house with a wraparound porch and a swing hanging from the ceiling. It looked like the house my grandma had lived in when I was little.
“Whose house is this?” I asked.
“Yours,” Crawford said. “Your parents bought it the year you were born. They wanted you to have a place to go if anything ever happened to them. I’ve been keeping it up for you.”
I stared at the house. I’d never known it existed.
We got out. Lila ran up the porch steps and sat on the swing, kicking her feet. For a second, she looked like a normal eight-year-old girl, not the daughter of a con man who’d just had her entire world turned upside down.
Crawford turned to me. “I know this is a lot to take in. But you’re not alone, Emily. Your parents made sure of that. The trust is safe. I froze all the accounts this morning. He can’t touch another penny. And we’re going to make him pay for everything he’s done.”
I looked at Lila on the swing. I looked at the house my parents had left me. For the first time since that slap across the face, I didn’t feel scared.
May you like
I felt angry.
“Good,” I said. “Because I’m going to destroy him.”
