Chapter 3

The next few days were a blur of legal paperwork and tense phone calls.

David' s lawyers were aggressive, but Robert was a bulldog.

He held the line.

The injunction stood.

The accounts remained frozen.

The pressure was mounting on David, but the public front was all bravado.

Chloe continued to post pictures of their lavish lifestyle, a constant, petty assault.

One evening, I got a call from an old friend, Sarah.

She and her husband had been close to both me and Mark.

"Ava, I just heard what' s happening," she said, her voice full of a carefully constructed concern.

"It' s just awful. But... are you sure this is the right way to handle it?"

I was sitting in the dark, looking at an old photo of me and Mark on the construction site of the house.

We were both covered in dust, laughing, his arm around my shoulders.

"What other way is there, Sarah?" I asked.

"Well, I spoke to David," she said, and my stomach tightened.

"He' s very upset. He says this is all a terrible misunderstanding. He thinks... well, he thinks your grief might be clouding your judgment."

I was silent.

The betrayal felt like a sudden drop in temperature.

"He said Mark was worried about you, about how you' d cope," Sarah continued, stumbling into the trap David had set for her.

"He says Mark signed the house over to him to manage, to take the burden off you. For your own good."

For my own good.

The condescension was suffocating.

"And you believe him?" I asked, my voice dangerously soft.

"I just think... maybe you should talk to him. Without the lawyers. David' s not a bad guy, Ava. He' s just... ambitious. He was Mark' s partner for ten years. You can' t just throw that away. You need to consider letting the house go. It might be for the best."

That was it.

The final, brittle snap of a bond I had thought was strong.

"Thank you for your concern, Sarah," I said, my tone glacial.

I ended the call before she could reply.

She was defending him.

She was asking me to surrender my home, Mark' s legacy, to the man who had desecrated it, all because he was "not a bad guy."

In that moment, I saw how easily people chose the path of least resistance, how willing they were to accept a convenient lie over an uncomfortable truth.

The next day, as if on cue, I received a text from an unknown number.

It was a picture of Chloe, pouting, with a fake tear drawn on her cheek.

The message below read: "I' m so sorry for everything. Can' t we all just get along? Xoxo, C."

The sheer audacity of it, the childish, manipulative mockery, was staggering.

It wasn' t an apology; it was a taunt.

It was a performance for David, the poor, innocent girl being bullied by the crazy widow.

I didn' t reply.

I deleted the message and went back to studying the blueprints.

My focus narrowed to a single page, a cross-section of the main supporting wall in the living room.

The wall they had plastered with that hideous gold-flocked paper.

My phone rang again.

It was Robert.

"Good news," he said.

"The document examiner gave his preliminary report. The signature on the deed transfer is a high-quality forgery, but a forgery nonetheless. He' s 100% certain. But David' s lawyers are going to fight it, claim our expert is biased. It could be tied up in court for a year or more."

"A year is too long," I said.

"I know, Ava, but the legal system moves slowly."

"Then we need to make it move faster," I replied, my eyes tracing a line on the blueprint.

A line indicating a small, concealed maintenance panel behind the wall.

"Robert, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to find me the best, most discreet plumbing and water damage specialist in the city."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.

"Plumbing?" Robert asked, confused.

"Yes," I said, a slow, cold smile touching my lips for the first time in months.

"I think the house is about to spring a leak."

I thought about Sarah' s phone call, about Chloe' s pathetic text.

They were all so concerned about feelings and getting along.

They talked about trust and friendship as if those things still existed.

But they had forgotten the most basic truth.

Dogs are loyal.

People are not.

And I was done mourning the loss of loyalty from people who never had any to begin with.

I was ready to act.