*Jessi, you need to check the joint account right now. Wendy told Luca while they were driving back to your house to ‘protect the assets.’ I’m sitting in their living room pretending to look at my phone, but they’re opening banking apps. Get your money out.*
A cold shock of adrenaline hit my bloodstream.
I opened our banking app on my phone. My thumb shook against the glass.
Three months ago, my grandmother had passed away, leaving me an inheritance of eighty-five thousand dollars. I had placed sixty thousand of it into our primary high-yield savings account to serve as a down payment for a larger home with a yard for Fiona.
I logged in.
*Account Balance: $412.18.*
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.
“What is it?” Rachel asked, rushing to my side.
“He drained it,” I whispered, staring at the screen. “He transferred sixty-four thousand dollars out of our savings five minutes ago. To an external account labeled ‘Vance Asset Management.’”
“Wendy’s family fund,” Rachel said, her voice trembling with fury. “That bastard.”
I didn’t cry. The time for tears had died in the parking lot when my daughter asked if her grandmother hated her. A strange, ferocious clarity took over my mind.
I had spent two years accommodating them. Two years letting Wendy dictate holiday menus, letting her critique my nursing schedule, letting her tell me my daughter was too clingy, too quiet, too slow. I had endured it all to keep the peace, believing that Luca was just a man caught between his mother and his wife.
Now I knew the truth. Luca wasn’t caught in the middle. He was Wendy’s willing soldier.
“Rachel,” I said, turning to look at my friend. “Do you still have that contact for Eleanor Vance?”
Rachel paused, surprised. Eleanor Vance was one of the most feared family law attorneys in our county. She was known as the ‘Velvet Guillotine’—impeccably polite in court, utterly lethal in cross-examination. She also happened to be Wendy’s second cousin, though they hadn’t spoken in fifteen years due to a bitter family feud over their grandfather’s estate.
“I have her private cell,” Rachel said slowly, a fierce grin beginning to break through her shock. “She’s had dinner at my parents’ house. She hates Wendy more than anyone on this earth.”
“Call her,” I said. “Tell her I need an emergency consultation tomorrow at eight in the morning.”
“What are you going to do tonight?”
I stood up and grabbed my car keys from the counter. “Luca thinks I’m hiding here, crying into a pillow. He thinks he holds all the cards because he took the cash.”
“Jessi, you can’t go back there,” Rachel warned, grabbing my arm. “He’s dangerous when he’s backed into a corner.”
