Chapter 6 - WHY VICTOR CHOSE ME
I wanted to ask Victor directly.
Rebecca stopped me.
“He’ll either lie or tell you something designed to hurt you.”
“So I just never know?”
“No. We look for evidence.”
That became the rule.
Evidence before interpretation.
We reviewed early messages.
Victor had asked unusual questions.
What was Mom like on the bench?
Did she keep old case files?
Did she ever talk about difficult litigants?
At the time, I thought he was fascinated by my family.
Now it looked different.
Then one message:
My mother thinks your mom ruined someone’s life once.
I had replied with a laughing emoji.
Victor answered:
She remembers everything.
I didn’t.
Until now.
Lorraine had carried resentment toward Mom for decades.
Did Victor marry me as revenge?
That sounded too theatrical.
Real motives are rarely that clean.
David warned me.
“Victor loved you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw him become terrified of losing you.”
“That isn’t love.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“But fear can grow inside love until it controls everything.”
That I believed.
Victor may have approached me partly because Lorraine recognized my name.
Then genuinely fallen in love.
Then repeated what he learned from her.
Those truths could coexist.
The financial case moved faster.
Forensic review showed Carter Family Holdings paid Lorraine’s mortgage.
Victor’s private club dues.
Fertility expenses.
And transfers to the fake Hayes company.
The fake company money later moved into an account under a third name.
Samuel Price.
The former evaluator who signed the affidavit against Mom.
He had been paid.
$32,000.
For what?
Consulting.
He claimed.
Then admitted Victor paid him to “review historical family-court concerns.”
Meaning:
Dig up anything that could discredit Margaret.
Mom stared at the evidence.
“He didn’t create the old case because of the divorce.”
“What do you mean?”
“Victor had Price digging months before the restaurant.”
Why?
The timestamps showed payments began seven months earlier.
Before my miscarriage records resurfaced.
Before I knew about the embryo.
Before our visible marriage crisis.
Victor had been preparing.
Then we found a document on the Hayes Consulting account.
Draft civil complaint.
Margaret Hayes abused judicial authority in 1997 and later extorted the Carter family through her daughter.
Completely fabricated.
But detailed.
Why build this?
Revenge against Mom.
Protection for Lorraine.
Leverage against me.
And possibly something else.
Then David remembered an old trust.
His father had left Victor money.
Lorraine managed it while Victor was a minor.
When Victor turned twenty-five, the account should have transferred fully to him.
David believed it held about $900,000.
Victor told me his grandfather left him “a little money.”
We checked.
The account had been nearly emptied before Victor turned twenty-five.
Withdrawals authorized by Lorraine.
Education.
Housing.
Care.
Some legitimate.
Some impossible to verify.
Victor had sued her privately ten years earlier.
The case settled confidentially.
Lorraine repaid part.
Victor never told me.
Suddenly his relationship with her looked even stranger.
He wasn’t simply controlled by Lorraine.
He had once fought her over money.
Then reconciled.
Why?
David said:
“Because she gave him something he wanted more than the money.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
The settlement agreement was sealed.
But one clause appeared in a later estate document.
Lorraine agreed to transfer ownership of a lake property to Victor.
The property address looked familiar.
I had been there once.
Victor called it his “childhood retreat.”
There was a locked room upstairs he never let me enter.
Said it contained family junk.
David saw the address.
His face went white.
“That house belonged to my mother.”
“So?”
“She kept records.”
“What kind?”
“Everything.”
Custody documents.
Financial ledgers.
Letters.
Tape recordings.
His mother distrusted Lorraine.
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If those records remained in the locked room, they might explain why Victor stayed tied to Lorraine.
And why she had spent decades fearing Margaret Hayes.
