Chapter 8 - The Forged Statements
I opened the folder.
Marta watched from across the shattered vase.
The first page showed the deed.
My name.
My purchase date.
Eighteen months before Thomas and I met.
Marta read it twice.
Then she looked at her son.
“You said this was wrong.”
Thomas stared at the floor.
The mortgage history came next.
Every payment originated from my account.
Not his.
The property agreement carried his signature.
Marta recognized it.
“He signed this?”
“Yes.”
She turned toward him.
“You knew.”
Thomas answered, “I knew what the document said.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Sophie’s attorney pressured me.”
Rachel had never spoken to him directly.
He had his own lawyer review the agreement.
I said that.
Marta’s anger shifted.
Not toward me.
Toward the evidence.
She grabbed the mortgage history.
“These aren’t the statements you showed me.”
“Exactly,” I said.
Thomas stepped forward.
“Mom, give me that.”
She pulled it away.
The documents he showed her claimed he paid seventy percent of the mortgage.
The account numbers were false.
The bank logo was copied.
The balances were fabricated.
Thomas had not only lied verbally.
He created a paper history in which he rescued me financially.
Marta used that fake history to justify helping him take control.
She believed she was protecting her son from a dishonest wife.
But she had never verified anything.
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She believed him because the lie made him powerful.
And because it made me ungrateful.
