Chapter 2 - RomeGraham's flight landed in Rome the following morning. At 9:17 a.m., my phone rang. He was already shouting before I said hello.
"What did you do to my account?"
I stayed silent.
"My card was declined," he snapped. "The bank says the money is restricted."
Then another voice came through. Priya. "Graham, you told me the apartment was already paid for."
I looked across the kitchen table at Wren eating cereal and finally answered. "No, Graham. You told me exactly what you did."
A long silence. Then he lowered his voice. "Sable… I borrowed against the house too."
My stomach tightened. "What do you mean you borrowed against the house?"
Graham admitted he had opened a home-equity line of credit six weeks earlier and withdrawn $40,000. We'd discussed a line of credit the previous year, for kitchen renovations, but I had never agreed to draw money from it. Naomi later confirmed the account had been opened using documents bearing an electronic signature in my name.
I told him not to contact me again unless it concerned Wren.
He exploded. "You're acting like I robbed you."
"You emptied our savings and used my name on a loan."
"I was going to pay it back."
"With what?"
May you like
He hung up.
That afternoon, I gave Naomi every document I could find. We notified the lender that I disputed the authorization and requested the underlying application records. We also asked the court to preserve the remaining marital assets while the divorce moved forward. Graham's text became one of the strongest pieces of evidence, since he'd openly admitted moving the money immediately before leaving the country.
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