PART 2

My hands shook as I stared at the message.

“Your fiancée has already changed the beneficiary on your life insurance policy.”

I read it three times.

It couldn’t be real.

But after everything I had just witnessed, nothing seemed impossible anymore.

The police sirens grew louder outside.

Valerie’s face turned ghostly white.

“Daniel,” she whispered, “don’t listen to whoever sent that. They’re trying to destroy us.”

Us.

There was no “us” anymore.

I looked at my mother sitting weakly on a chair while blood trickled from the corner of her lip.

Then I looked at Valerie.

For the first time, I saw her clearly.

Not the woman I loved.

Not the woman I planned to marry.

Just a stranger wearing a mask.

The police entered the house.

One officer immediately checked on my mother while another separated Valerie from us.

I handed over the forged power-of-attorney documents.

Then I showed them the camera.

The officer reviewed a few minutes of footage.

His expression darkened.

“How much footage is there?” he asked.

“Months,” I replied.

Valerie’s knees nearly gave out.

The recordings showed everything.

The insults.

The threats.

The humiliation.

The way she hid my mother’s medication.

The way she mocked her.

The way she forced her to eat alone.

The way she smiled sweetly whenever I came home.

By evening, Valerie was sitting in the back of a police car.

She looked at me through the window.

“You owe me!” she screamed.

“I loved you!”

I stared at her.

“No,” I said quietly. “You loved what I could give you.”

The car drove away.

I thought the nightmare was over.

I was wrong.

The next morning, I received a call from an investigator.

“Mr. Robles, we’d like you to come down to the station.”

“What happened?”

part2