Chapter 5 - The Crocodile Tears
At 2:45 PM, my phone rang.
It was Ramirez.
"We got him. He went down screaming."
A deep sense of satisfaction washed over me.
Mark was in handcuffs.
His life was officially over.
But thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang again.
I checked the camera feed.
It was Chloe.
She was alone this time.
She had a massive suitcase with her.
She was crying hysterically, pounding on the door.
I opened it cautiously.
"Mom!" she screamed, throwing her arms around me.
"They arrested Mark! They said he committed fraud!"
She sobbed into my shoulder.
"He lied to me, Mom! He had another woman!"
She looked utterly destroyed.
Any mother's instinct would be to comfort her child.
To pull her inside, make her tea, and tell her everything would be okay.
I let her into the hallway.
"He took everything," Chloe cried, sitting on the bench.
"I'm a victim, Mom. I'm just another victim in his sick game."
I handed her a tissue.
"You can stay in the guest room," I told her quietly.
"Thank you," she whimpered, dragging her heavy suitcase inside.
She went upstairs to unpack and rest.
I stood in the foyer, staring up the stairs.
Something was bothering me.
Mark was a thug, yes.
But he wasn't a mastermind.
Forging my signature on a complex real estate document?
Bypassing Arthur's legal lien?
That required intimate knowledge of my financial files.
Files that were locked in my home office.
Files that only one other person knew how to find.
I looked at the door to my study.
May you like
Then I looked upstairs toward the guest room.
My heart began to pound.
