Chapter 5 - The Chicago Life Had Been Funded Somewhere
The next morning Julia called me.
I almost didn’t answer.
But I did.
Her first words were not defensive.
“I’m sorry I hit you.”
I pressed my hand against my forehead. The red mark was faint now, but I could still feel the heat of it.
“I know.”
There was a pause.
Then Julia said, “I’m not calling about that. I think you need to know he used your money.”
My entire body went still.
She explained that Tyler had rented a furnished condo in Chicago for her and Ethan. He had always described it as temporary, then permanent, then “just until he sorted old estate issues.” He paid the rent without fail. He covered Ethan’s daycare. He bought furniture, groceries, even a little red wagon for the building courtyard.
“He told me part of the money came from assets that were tied up after your deaths,” she said, then corrected herself, voice breaking, “after the deaths he claimed happened.”
I stared at the wall.
There was only one source Tyler regularly controlled without my looking too closely.
My late mother’s rental property fund.
After my mother died, she left me a small portfolio of income from two townhomes outside Savannah. The money came monthly into a joint household account Tyler often managed because, in the middle of work, motherhood, and everyday life, I had trusted him to help with bookkeeping.
Not control it.
Help with it.
I opened the banking app on my laptop while Julia was still talking.
At first the numbers looked normal.
Then I checked transfers.
There they were.
Monthly wire payments I had stopped noticing because they were labeled vaguely—*property maintenance*, executive housing, travel reimbursements.
They had all gone to accounts or payment portals based in Chicago.
The room spun.
Tyler had used my inheritance to finance the lie that buried me.
By noon I had printed everything.
By two o’clock I had a consultation with a lawyer.
And by evening, I knew the affair was only half the story.
May you like
The rest of it was theft.
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