“He knows where that down payment money came from,” Evelyn said softly.

“Your grandmother saved every single dollar from her tailor shop so you’d have a safe roof over your head.”

I clipped the deposit receipt to the front of our original purchase contract and slid the bundle into a plastic sleeve.

Next to it lay the audited bank statements showing the forty-two thousand dollars Mark had transferred toward Vanessa’s boutique lease debt over six months.

Under those pages were the airline receipt for the four-hundred-eighteen-dollar trip to Miami and the loan agreement for the fifteen-thousand-dollar personal credit line with my forged signature in dark blue ink.