The key slid into the lock, but the door opened from the inside. I froze. This apartment was supposed to be empty. Arthur told me the tenant moved out last month and he hadn't found a new one yet. The door swung open. Standing there was a woman in a silk slip dress, her hair wet, looking like she had just stepped out of the shower. When she saw me, she froze too. Then, she called out a name. Not "Who are you looking for?" It was— "Arthur?" She thought the person at the door was my husband. This apartment was left to me by my mom. The year my mom passed away, the eminent domain buyout was just approved. She never got to live here for a single day. 1. The woman stood in the doorway, her hand still resting on the doorknob. Behind her was the living room. The lights were on. The TV was on. A plate of sliced fruit sat on the coffee table. A pair of men's slippers rested next to the shoe cabinet. They were Arthur's. I recognized those slippers. I bought them at Target last year—a two-pack. One pair for the house, and he said he'd keep the other pair at the warehouse to change into. Turns out they weren't at the warehouse. They were here. "Who are you?" She finally reacted, her voice a bit shrill. "Why do you have a key?" I didn't answer. I looked down at the slippers on her feet—pink, fluffy, the soles clean. Those weren't the slippers of someone who just moved in. Those were the slippers of someone who had lived here for a long time. On the living room wall, there was a framed photo. A picture of two people. Arthur and her. He had his arm around her shoulders, smiling broadly. I stared at that photo for three seconds. Arthur rarely smiled. When he was with me, he always had a deadpan face. No matter what I said, his responses were always "mm," "oh," or "got it." In the photo, he was smiling like a twenty-year-old kid. "Who exactly are you?" Her voice grew louder. "I am the landlord of this apartment." After saying that, I turned and walked away. The stairwell was very quiet. I held onto the railing as I walked down. First floor. Second floor. Third floor. When I reached the lobby on the ground floor, I stopped. I pulled out my phone and checked the time. 7:43 PM. I came today because the HOA called, saying there was a leak in this unit and asking the owner to come take a look. Arthur said he couldn't make it, told me not to worry about it, and said he'd hire someone to fix it. I told him I happened to be in the area. He was silent on the other end of the line for two seconds. Those two seconds—thinking back on them now—were entirely fueled by guilt. I stood in the ground-floor lobby. It was already dark outside. My phone lit up. It was Arthur. "Are you home yet? The warehouse is slammed today; I'll be back late tonight." I shoved my phone back into my pocket. In these fifteen years, how many times had he said "the warehouse is slammed"? I didn't go home. I sat in my car parked downstairs for two hours. I didn't cry. I just sat there. On the sixth floor of the building outside my window, the lights were still on. That was my mom's apartment. My mom lived her whole life in an old alleyway, in a tiny four-hundred-square-foot place that leaked rain in the summer and drafted cold air in the winter. The year the demolition notice came down, she was so happy she couldn't sleep. She told me, "Chloe, Mom is finally going to live in a nice house." She never got the chance. Three months before the relocation apartments were ready, she passed away. The name on the deed was mine. She signed it and pressed her fingerprint on it while she was on her deathbed. That day, she held my hand and said, "This house is for you. It's Mom giving you a safety net." Now, inside this "safety net," lived a young woman in a slip dress. 2. I've been married to Arthur for fifteen years. How should I put it? It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad either. In the first few years of our marriage, he didn't talk much, but he was reliable. Every day he went to the building materials market to restock, deliver goods, and collect payments. I worked as a quality inspector at an electronics factory. We pooled our salaries to pay the mortgage, raise our child, and get by. It wasn't romantic, but it felt stable. He wasn't romantic. In fifteen years of marriage, he never bought me a single birthday present. One year, for my birthday, I bought a cake myself, sliced it, and brought it to the table. He took one look and asked, "What's the occasion today?" I said, "It's my birthday." He just said, "Oh." "Let's eat." I ate that cake for three days. He didn't touch a single bite. During the two years my mom was sick, I worked during the day and went to the hospital at night. The hospital was on the east side of the city; we lived on the west side. I had to take two different buses, an hour and a half each way. Arthur never once went with me. I asked him once, "Can you drive me to the hospital tomorrow? Mom is getting chemo, and I can't carry everything by myself." He said, "I can't get away from the warehouse. Just take an Uber." I took an Uber. It cost fifty-eight dollars. I remember it very clearly: fifty-eight dollars. Because that day, I only had exactly sixty dollars in cash in my pocket. I took the two dollars in change and stuffed it into the pocket of my mom's hospital gown. Later, Mom passed away. I handled the funeral arrangements entirely by myself. Arthur showed up for half a day and took three phone calls, all from the warehouse. The next day, he said he had to go back because a shipment of building materials needed to be inspected. I said okay. I handled all the paperwork for the eminent domain buyout. I ran around for over four months. The city planning office, the relocation department, the housing authority, the notary public. Arthur never went with me once. Once, I asked him to drop off a document at the housing authority for me. He said over the phone, "Just go yourself, I don't understand any of that stuff." The day the deed was finally issued, I sat alone on the steps outside the housing authority, clutching that document. I wanted to call my mom. I scrolled through my phone to her number. The number was still there. But she was gone. I put my phone away, stood up, and dusted off my pants. I went to the grocery store and bought food. I made four dishes for dinner. Arthur came home, took a look, and asked, "Why did you make so much today?" "The deed came through." "Oh, that's good." He didn't ask another question. He didn't ask how big the apartment was, when it would be ready to move in, or how long I had spent dealing with the paperwork. Later, he said we shouldn't move in right away, but rent it out to collect some income. I thought that made sense; we already had a place to live, and renting it out would help with our finances. He said he would find the tenant. I said okay. Every month, he would transfer a thousand dollars to me, saying it was the rent. A thousand dollars. I didn't think much of it at the time. Thinking about it now, an apartment in that complex should rent for at least two thousand five hundred. Where did he spend the missing fifteen hundred? No, that's not right. There was never a tenant. From the very beginning, there wasn't one. I sat in the car until 10 PM. It was very cold outside the car window. The February wind seeped through the cracks. I shoved my hands into my pockets and felt that set of keys. The ones my mom gave me. She said, "Chloe, this house is for you. It's Mom giving you a safety net." My safety net had been hollowed out by him. 3. The next day, I took half a day off work. I didn't go looking for Arthur. Nor did I go looking for that woman. I went to the apartment complex's HOA office. "Hello, I'm the owner of Unit 602 in Building 6." I showed the HOA staff a photo of the deed. The young man at the desk checked his computer. "Ms. Chloe Hayes, correct? Are you here to report a maintenance issue? About that leak yesterday—" "I'd like to check who has been paying the HOA fees for 602 over the past two years." The young man scrolled through the records. "It was paid by a Mr... Arthur Vance. Paid annually." "Starting from when?" "March 2023." March 2023. It's now February 2025. Almost two years. "One more thing," I tried to keep my voice as steady as possible. "Do you have a registry for the residents of 602?" "Yes, tenants are required to register with the HOA." He clicked his mouse a few times. "The registered resident is... Ms. Mia Smith. Move-in date: March 15, 2023." March 15, 2023. The day after the first anniversary of my mother's passing. My grip on my phone tightened slightly. Coming out of the HOA office, I stood by the complex's flowerbed. An older gentleman was walking his dog. He glanced at me. "You from 602?" "Yes." "That girl from your place—is she a relative? She's nice, always polite when we run into each other. But when that guy comes over, they can be a bit loud." "That guy... does he come over often?" "Usually two or three times a week. Sometimes he brings groceries, sometimes fruit. Last month he even hauled a treadmill up there." Bringing groceries. Bringing fruit. Hauling a treadmill. I did the math in my head. In fifteen years of marriage, the things Arthur bought for me: a washing machine (we pooled money for appliances when we got married) and a rice cooker (the old one broke). Anything else? Nothing. Even when I was hospitalized to give birth, I packed my own hospital bag. I thanked him and left the complex. Sitting on the bus, I opened my phone and scrolled to a specific contact on WhatsApp. Sarah. My best friend of over a decade. She had worked at a real estate agency for eight years and now led her own team. I didn't send a message. I put my phone away. It wasn't time yet. I needed to know more first. That evening, Arthur came home. At 8:30 PM, same as usual. He changed his shoes, washed his hands, and sat down to eat. I had cooked three dishes and a soup. Same as usual. "Arthur, how long ago did the tenant in the relocation apartment move out?" His hand holding his chopsticks paused. "Sometime last month." "Have you found a new tenant yet?" "Not yet, no rush." "The HOA called me about a leak. I went to check it out yesterday." He put down his chopsticks. "You went?" "Yeah." "Didn't I tell you I'd hire someone to fix it? Why did you go all the way out there?" "I was in the area." He glanced at me, didn't say anything, and went back to eating. "Is the leak fixed?" I asked. "I'll get someone to look at it tomorrow." He kept his head down, shoveling food into his mouth, refusing to look at me. I also kept my head down and ate. The faucet in the kitchen was dripping. Drip, drop. For fifteen years, I had been asking him to fix that faucet. He always said tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. When it came to my things, it was always tomorrow. 4. I started digging through his bank statements. It wasn't snooping. When we got married, we opened a joint account to pay the mortgage. I had access to the transaction history. I opened the banking app and selected the statements for the past two years. I scrolled through, page by page. March 2023 — Transfer, $5,000, Payee "Mia Smith". April 2023 — Transfer, $5,000, Payee "Mia Smith". May. June. All the way to January 2025. Twenty-three months. $5,000 every month. Total: $115,000. One hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. He transferred me $1,000 for "rent" every month, and transferred her $5,000. I then checked his Venmo and Cash App history. May 2023 — Transfer, $8,000. Memo: Renovations. August 2023 — Purchase, $12,600. At a furniture store. December 2023 — Transfer, $15,000. Memo: None. February 2024 — Purchase, $6,800. At a jewelry store. Jewelry store. When we got married, my ring was a two-hundred-dollar silver band. He said once we made money, we'd upgrade to gold. Fifteen years later, no upgrade. He bought her six thousand eight hundred dollars worth of jewelry. I recorded every single number in my phone's notes app. With every entry, my finger tapped the screen. I wasn't making a spreadsheet. I was counting how much I had been conned out of. Bank transfers: $115,000. Additional app transfers/purchases: approx. $68,000. Plus two years of HOA fees: approx. $6,000. Plus utilities, daily expenses, and that treadmill. A conservative estimate— Over two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand. Working as a quality inspector at the factory, my monthly salary was $4,300. Two hundred thousand was nearly four years of my salary, assuming I didn't spend a single cent on food or water. He claimed the warehouse wasn't making much money, said the building materials market was in a slump. Last winter, my winter coat tore. I couldn't bear to buy a new one, so I stitched it up myself. While I was sewing, the thread broke three times. Finally, I tied a knot. When I wore it outside, the wind blew right through the needle holes. Two hundred thousand. I locked my phone and placed it on the table. On the table was a bowl of instant ramen. I hadn't wanted to spend money at the cafeteria for lunch today, so I made myself a cup of noodles. Three dollars and fifty cents.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "394786", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel