Chapter 6: The Money Trail

I barely slept that night.

Not because I missed Luke.

Not because I wanted him back.

I was awake because one question kept circling through my mind.

How long had they been planning this?

At seven the next morning, I made coffee and opened my laptop at the kitchen table.

I pulled up my bank statements.

Then I started going through them month by month.

At first, everything looked ordinary.

Mortgage payments.

Utilities.

Groceries.

Car insurance.

The usual expenses of a life shared between two people.

Then I noticed something I had never paid attention to before.

Transfers to Luke.

Small ones at first.

Two hundred dollars.

Three hundred.

Four hundred and fifty.

Every few weeks.

I had always thought of them as helping him get back on his feet.

But when I looked at the dates, a pattern appeared.

The transfers had increased dramatically over the last eight months.

That was around the same time Luke and Maya had supposedly become closer as friends.

I opened another statement.

Then another.

My stomach tightened.

There were payments for Luke's credit card.

His phone bill.

A medical bill he'd told me he was handling himself.

Even the security deposit for the apartment he'd supposedly considered renting before deciding we should buy a house together.

I had paid for almost all of it.

And I had never questioned it.

Because I loved him.

I opened my credit-card history next.

There were several charges I didn't recognize.

Restaurant dinners.

A hotel outside Charlotte.

A jewelry store.

My fingers stopped moving.

The jewelry store charge was for $1,280.

I remembered that day.

Luke had told me he was working late.

Maya had told me she was at home watching a movie.

I stared at the transaction.

Then I checked the date.

It was the same weekend they had claimed they were both too busy to come with me to my cousin's birthday dinner.

My chest felt strangely calm.

I didn't feel heartbroken anymore.

I felt angry.

Not the kind of anger that made me want to scream.

The kind that made everything sharp.

I called the credit-card company.

After verifying my identity, I asked for a complete list of recent authorized-user transactions.

The representative emailed the records.

I opened the attachment.

There were dozens of charges.

Some were clearly Luke's.

Others were places I had never been.

Then I saw one merchant name that made me sit up straight.

A wedding boutique.

The purchase was dated six weeks ago.

Six weeks.

Two weeks after their secret marriage.

I scrolled further.

There was another charge from the same store.

And another.

My hands went cold.

They hadn't just gotten married.

They had been spending my money building their married life while I was planning mine with Luke.

I took screenshots of everything.

Then I forwarded the records to my attorney.

A few minutes later, he called.

“Elena, I received the documents.”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

There was a pause.

“Bad enough that you should stop communicating with either of them directly about money.”

I leaned back in my chair.

“What should I do?”

“Preserve every record. Don't delete anything. And from this point forward, don't give them access to any account, card, or property that belongs to you.”

“Already done.”

He sounded relieved.

“Good.”

I looked at the stack of printed statements beside me.

“There's something else.”

I told him about the wedding boutique charges.

His tone changed.

“Send me those too.”

After the call ended, I sat quietly for several minutes.

Then my phone buzzed.

A message from Maya.

“Please don't make this uglier than it already is.”

I stared at the screen.

I typed one sentence.

“You made it ugly when you married him.”

Then I deleted it.

I wasn't going to argue with her.

I had something better.

Proof.

I opened my laptop again and created a spreadsheet.

Date.

Amount.

Merchant.

Account.

Description.

I entered every transaction I could verify.

By noon, the list was almost four pages long.

At the bottom, I calculated the total.

I stared at the number.

Luke and Maya had spent thousands of dollars through accounts connected to me.

And suddenly, something clicked.

The house wasn't their first attempt.

It was simply the biggest one.

They had been testing how much I would give them.

How much I would overlook.

How much I would forgive.

They thought my love made me weak.

They were about to discover that my patience had been the only thing protecting them.

That afternoon, another message appeared.

This time from Luke.

“We need to talk tonight. There are things you don't know.”

I read it twice.

For the first time since the closing, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Not because I wanted him back.

Because I wanted to know just how deep the lie went.