Chapter 6 - The Marriage Deadline
Detective Morales asked everyone to remain separated.
Margaret sat in the cream armchair she had struck moments earlier.
Ethan stood near the fireplace, his hands opening and closing.
Ava stayed beside Rosa.
“How much debt?” Ava asked again.
Ethan looked toward the officers.
“I want a lawyer.”
“You’re entitled to one,” Detective Morales said. “But Ava asked you a personal question.”
He said nothing.
Margaret laughed bitterly.
“Tell her. She deserves to know what kind of man she almost married.”
Ethan glared at her.
“You created this.”
“I cleaned up after you.”
“With my money,” Ava said.
Margaret looked at her as though the answer were obvious.
“With the money you would have shared after marriage.”
Detective Morales opened another document.
“Mr. Parker owed approximately three hundred and eighty thousand dollars to a private investment group.”
Ava stared at Ethan.
His salary at a construction-design firm was comfortable but nowhere near enough to cover that amount.
“How?”
“A development project,” he muttered. “It failed.”
Margaret scoffed.
“He gambled on land he never owned.”
Ethan’s face flushed.
“I had contracts.”
“You had promises.”
Ava remembered the future Ethan had described.
A lake house.
A design studio.
Enough money for Ava to leave nursing and stay home with the baby.
None of it had been real.
“The lender gave him until the week after your wedding,” Detective Morales said. “According to the records we obtained this morning, Ethan represented that he would gain access to substantial marital assets.”
Ava’s mouth went dry.
Her grandmother had left her a trust fund.
Ethan knew about it.
He also knew the principal could not be touched by anyone else while Ava remained unmarried.
But after marriage, he had repeatedly encouraged her to combine everything “for the family.”
“You weren’t marrying me,” she whispered.
Ethan finally looked at her.
“I loved you.”
“You calculated me.”
“I was going to repay it.”
“With what?”
He had no answer.
Margaret rose from the chair.
“This family would have protected you. You and the baby would never have wanted for anything.”
Ava turned toward her.
“You locked me inside your home for a PIN.”
“To save my son.”
“You mean to save yourself.”
Margaret’s eyes flicked toward the scattered invoices.
Ava saw the fear return.
Ethan’s debt explained the wedding pressure.
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It did not explain why Margaret had created a fake company months before the engagement.
👉 The false wedding business had existed long before Ava became Ethan’s fiancée.
