Chapter 15 - THE RECORDINGS
Lacey had six audio files.
Damon had sent them to her over three months.
Each one captured me at my worst.
Crying.
Raising my voice.
Begging him to stop following me from room to room.
Saying, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Removed from context, I sounded unstable.
But Lacey had something Damon did not know she possessed.
Longer versions.
“He sent edited clips,” she said. “I kept some original voice notes because he talked before and after recording you.”
Grace played one.
Damon’s voice came first.
“You don’t deserve that baby if you can’t even control yourself.”
Then mine.
“Get away from me.”
A door slammed.
Damon continued.
“You’re proving my point.”
I heard myself cry.
Then the edited section began.
Only my voice remained.
I covered my mouth.
I could not decide what hurt more—that he had planned the cruelty or that I had spent months wondering whether I truly had become unreasonable.
Dad stared at the table.
He had received two of the edited clips.
Damon had sent them privately.
Dad had believed I was under pressure.
He had never imagined the pressure had a person deliberately applying it.
Lacey looked at me.
“I didn’t know about the kennel.”
I laughed once.
“You knew about the facility.”
“Yes.”
“You knew about the money.”
“Yes.”
“You knew he was manufacturing evidence.”
She looked down.
“Yes.”
“Then don’t ask me to separate the parts you regret from the parts you enjoyed.”
That landed.
For the first time, Lacey stopped defending herself.
“I thought he was leaving you.”
“He was trying to erase me.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now because he’s losing.”
Her attorney shifted.
Grace said nothing.
She let me own the silence.
Then Lacey gave us the largest piece yet.
Damon had my laptop.
Not in the guesthouse anymore.
He had removed it before leaving the estate by placing it inside the false bottom of Lacey’s wine case.
The police had not known to check it because Lacey left with personal property and no warrant existed.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Lacey swallowed.
“Damon’s office.”
“Company office?”
“No.”
She wrote an address.
A private suite downtown rented under Halberd Capital Recovery.
The lender collecting Damon’s debt was also giving him office space.
Grace looked at the address.
“That makes no sense.”
Lacey’s face went pale.
“It does if you know what he promised them.”
“What?”
“Cedar Ridge.”
Damon had apparently pledged land he did not own to secure debt he could not repay.
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And if the lender discovered the pledge was worthless, Damon’s desperation would become dangerous in an entirely new way.
📖 The recordings proved Damon manufactured my instability, but the hidden pledge meant his creditors were about to discover he had promised them property he could never legally deliver. 👇
