I photographed every room, every missing item, and every piece of property Brenda had moved into my apartment.
Then I called Lauren.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Faye? I heard something happened with Dylan.”
Her voice sounded cautious, not surprised.
“I heard your recording.”
Silence.
Then she exhaled slowly.
“I can explain.”
“Were you actually recovering from emergency surgery?”
“I had surgery.”
“Was it an emergency?”
“The doctor said it was better not to delay.”
I closed my eyes.
I remembered changing her bandages, sorting pills, and canceling meetings because she insisted she could not be alone.
I remembered how quickly she improved whenever friends visited, only to become weak again when I mentioned returning home.
“Dylan paid you to keep me in Minnesota,” I said.
“He didn’t pay me.
He helped with some debts.”
“How much?”
“That isn’t the point.”
“How much, Lauren?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
The number landed more quietly than I expected.
“And what did you tell yourself the money was for?”
She began crying.
“He said he needed time to organize a surprise for Brenda.
He said the apartment paperwork was temporary and you would agree once everything was finished.”
“The recording says you knew the loan had to clear before I returned.”
Her crying stopped.
That was the moment I knew she had already chosen the version of events she planned to defend.
“I never signed anything,” she said.
“You can’t blame me for what Dylan did.”
“You helped isolate me from my home.
You lied about your medical condition.
You accepted money connected to the scheme.”
“I’m your sister.”
The words echoed Dylan’s demand that I protect him because I was his wife.
Both of them had treated family as permission.
“That should have made you safer to trust,” I said, “not safer from consequences.”
I ended the call.
The next morning, my attorney, Helena Ruiz, arrived before eight.
She had been the fraud attorney whose card I found behind the loan approval, but Dylan had not hired her.
The bank had contacted her firm two weeks earlier after an employee noticed inconsistencies in the power-of-attorney document.
The notarization seal belonged to a notary who had died six months before the document was supposedly signed.
The signature was an imitation.
The identification presented at the bank used my name and address but carried Brenda’s photograph.
The employee had delayed final release of the funds while the fraud team gathered evidence.
They allowed Dylan to believe the transaction was proceeding so they could identify everyone involved.
“Why didn’t anyone call me?” I asked.
“They did,” Helena said.
“Three times.”
She showed me the contact records.
Each call had been redirected to a number Dylan controlled.
He had changed the phone number on the loan profile and created an email address that differed from mine by one letter.
