Chapter 2 - The VoicemailI let the first call die. Then the second. On the seventh, Marcus finally left a voicemail, his voice so gentle it might have fooled the woman I'd been a month earlier.
"Emily, sweetheart, I made a terrible mistake. We need to talk about our future — our family."
Naomi listened beside me and raised one eyebrow. "He remembered the word family remarkably fast."
By morning, flowers had arrived, along with baby clothes and a photo from our wedding. I sent all of it back unopened. Then Kayla texted me directly.
Marcus says the ticket was bought with marital money. Be reasonable and nobody has to get ugly.
That threat made Naomi smile. The market receipt showed I'd paid cash at 8:14 p.m. — forty-six minutes after Marcus's timestamped text declaring our marriage over. Doorbell footage showed him leaving with his suitcase. Even better, Marcus and Kayla had signed a lease two days before that — his application listed them as "domestic partners," with a move-in date matching the exact night he walked out on me.
In North Carolina, property acquired after separation is separate property. Marcus had built some of the strongest evidence against himself, all on his own.
The lottery commission also had its own recorded claim interview, where I'd disclosed our separation before my identity ever went public. Naomi had made sure I answered every question carefully. Every record, in order, told the same story — long before Marcus even knew there was money worth fighting over.
We didn't tell him any of that.
Instead, Naomi filed for post-separation support, repayment of everything he'd drained from our accounts, and preservation of all financial records. That filing turned up something worse. During my pregnancy, Marcus had transferred $64,000 out of our home-equity line into a shell company controlled by Kayla — and forged my electronic signature on the loan documents to do it.
Two nights later, Marcus showed up at my townhouse in the navy suit I'd once bought him, carrying roses, glancing up at the little camera over the porch.
"Let me come home," he said. "The stress confused me."
"Did it confuse you before or after you took the grocery money?"
His smile tightened. "Half that jackpot is mine. If you fight me on this, lawyers will swallow all of it, and people are going to hear things about you."
"What things?"
He leaned in. "That you bought the ticket before I even left. That you begged me to come back. Courts like reconciliation stories."
Then I understood. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. He wanted me to let him cross that threshold so he could manufacture evidence our separation had already ended.
I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind me. "Send every claim through Naomi."
Marcus crushed the roses against the railing. "You were nothing without me."
The next morning, Kayla posted photos online implying Marcus had already gone back to his "millionaire wife." Then an edited audio clip surfaced, manipulated to sound like I'd agreed to split the winnings. Marcus petitioned the court for an emergency freeze on the jackpot.
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Naomi put the unedited recordings, the bank transfers, and the forged loan documents into a single evidence binder.
"Good," she said. "Now he's made his own fraud part of the court record."
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