Chapter 2 — The Starlight Motel

I sat in the reeking room of the Starlight Motel that night, watching the neon sign flicker outside the window.

Spread across the cheap bedspread were copies of the financial documents Mr. Meyers had pulled from the public registry in the last four hours.

Daniel hadn’t just forged my name on a loan. He’d signed me on as the primary guarantor for over three million dollars in high-yield, illegal junk debt.

He was planning to let it default that Friday, sending the creditors straight to me — and, ultimately, sending me to federal prison for fraud while he played the grieving single father.

He wasn’t just divorcing me. He was trying to bury me alive.

By the third day, the smell of stale cigarette smoke and bleach was etched into my clothes. It was a necessary suffering.