Chapter 11 — The Deed

The first document was the original deed to my parents’ estate — the Hartman ranch, three generations of my family, the foothill land my grandfather cleared with his own hands.

It should not have been in my husband’s safe at all.

And stamped across it, in the language of a private lender I did not recognize, was a lien.

A big one.

Desmond had put my family’s home up as collateral against a loan — a loan my father had never taken, against property my father still believed was unencumbered and safe.