"His house," she whispered. "Your house."
The wind seemed to stop. The world went dead silent.
"He couldn't," I said, the words thick in my throat "That's impossible. My name is on the deed. He couldn't use our home without my signature."
Lucia opened her eyes. They were wet.
"He handled the financing, Olivia. He said he took care of it."
"He couldn't have," I insisted. "I never signed anything. I never saw a loan officer."
"He brought the papers to the lender already signed," she said. "He said you did it at home because you couldn't get off work."
Ben's hand closed around my arm, the only thing keeping me upright.
The realization washed over me like ice water.
Ryan hadn't just lied. He hadn't just cheated.
"He forged it," I whispered.
Lucia didn't argue. She just looked at me with helpless, terrified eyes.
"He forged my signature," I said, the volume rising. "He leveraged the roof over my head for this... this ego trip."
"He was sure it would work," Lucia pleaded, as if his optimism mattered. "He was sure we’d sell it for more than a million, pay off the loan, and no one would ever know."
"But he didn't sell it," I said. "He died."
"Yes."
I looked at the skeleton house. At this… this tombstone.
"What happens now?" I asked. "If you can't finish this..."
"The loan comes due," Lucia half-whispered. "The full amount. And if we can't pay—" She looked at me. "They take your house. And my land. Everything we both put in."
I looked at Ben. His face was pale, his jaw set in a line of pure fury.
Ryan was gone.
And he had left me with a mistress, a half-finished house on Route 9, and a bank that was about to come for everything I owned.
Chapter 15
Olivia
"Ineed a moment."
I turned my back on Lucia's terrifying news and Ben's shocked face, and I walked toward the house.
My boots crunched through patches of snow that had blown onto the subflooring, then hit bare plywood with hollow thuds. The wind howled through the open frame, a low, mournful sound—the house singing its own emptiness.
I stepped over the threshold. Or what would have been the threshold, if there were walls, or doors. If this were a home instead of a crime scene.
Inside, the world opened up.
The space was aggressive in its scale. Cathedral ceilings soared thirty feet overhead, the yellow pine beams crossing in complex geometric patterns. Triangles within triangles. It was beautiful, even in this raw state. It was the kind of craftsmanship that required vision.
