A week later an acceptance email arrived, and I’d assumed I must have submitted it in some forgotten moment of courage.

Now I wondered whether someone else had done it for me.

Then more surfaced — abandoned applications, opportunities that appeared out of nowhere, successes I had always shrugged off as luck.

For the first time, I let myself wonder whether Matthew had been quietly steering my life for years.

Chapter 4 — The Evidence

For three days I acted as though nothing had changed. I ate dinner with him, answered his questions, and searched the house whenever he wasn’t looking.

I found nothing — until the afternoon he left his laptop open.