Chapter 8
Naomi wanted to call the unfamiliar number immediately. Instead, she read the message aloud to Mrs. Reid, saved a screenshot, and put the phone facedown.
It could be a warning. It could be bait. It could be Marcus hoping to catch her making an accusation he could use against her.
She sent it to Patel. The attorney advised her to preserve it and not to treat an anonymous message as proof of anything. Naomi blocked the impulse to play detective by herself. That had been Marcus's favorite accusation: she made trouble by asking questions nobody else needed answered.
In the afternoon, an officer called about Marcus's allegation that she'd injured his elbow. Marcus had given an account of the shove and claimed he'd been attacked. The officer wanted Naomi's response. She provided the incident number from her own report, described the belt and their positions, and offered the original video through the proper process.
When she hung up, her hands shook harder than they had the night she left.
"What if they believe him?" she asked Tasha.
"I can't promise what police or a judge will decide," the advocate said. "You have documentation. Keep working with your attorney and don't contact him in anger."
Naomi hated that there were no guarantees. Real life didn't pause at the moment an audience recognized the villain. A false allegation could still cost her money, time, and sleep.
Her supervisor offered temporary remote work for administrative tasks. Naomi accepted, even though she missed the ordinary noise of her office: printers, irritated clients, the microwave dinging in the break room. Every accommodation made the disruption Marcus had created feel larger.
At her kitchen-table workspace, she reviewed the lender's packet, item by item.
The new safety routine felt intrusive at first. Naomi changed the passcode on her phone, logged out of the shared tablet remotely where possible, and turned on account alerts. She left an emergency contact list in her purse and another in Mrs. Reid's kitchen. Each task reminded her of a question she'd never wanted to consider: if Marcus knew how to frighten her in private, how much more could he access because she had trusted him?
She also reviewed the household accounts without assuming every unfamiliar charge was fraud. A forgotten streaming subscription had renewed. A hardware-store receipt corresponded to paint Marcus had purchased months earlier. Naomi flagged only transactions she could not identify. She wanted to be exact. The investigation was already complicated enough without her adding ordinary domestic confusion to it. When she finished, she closed the spreadsheet and took a break instead of staying awake to search for danger in every number. It named an estimated line of credit of $132,000. A separate page described anticipated costs, not a binding offer. She noticed one field marked PURPOSE: PROPERTY OBLIGATION.
Not home repairs. Not household expenses. An obligation connected to another property.
She called the credit union fraud specialist, who confirmed that the application could not proceed without verification and that the institution was preserving relevant records. The specialist wouldn't reveal the source of every field while the review remained open, but she explained how Naomi could request copies of records tied to her identity.
Naomi followed the process and mailed a certified statement. She made a calendar of expected response windows because waiting without a structure was making her sick.
When she checked public county records for Evelyn, she discovered that the older woman owned a two-unit rental house on the west side of Atlanta. Naomi had visited that property once years earlier, when Marcus and Daniel painted a porch railing for their mother. She remembered Evelyn saying she would never sell it. It was her safety net.
A recorded security deed showed a lender's interest in the rental property. That alone proved nothing unusual; people borrowed against properties all the time. But its recent filing date was only eight months old.
Naomi wrote down the document number and resisted building a theory too quickly.
At six, Daniel appeared on Mrs. Reid's porch. He stayed outside the gate, hands visible, face pale. Mrs. Reid called Naomi but advised her not to open the door. Naomi watched him through the window.
"I didn't write the whole thing," Daniel called. "Marcus brought me the signature. I thought you had agreed."
"Then why hide an envelope in your car?" Naomi asked through the closed door.
May you like
He looked toward the driveway.
"Because I found the payment instructions," he said. "And they weren't what Marcus told me they would be."
