The digital signature had been executed from an IP address linked to my home network.

Which meant Nolan had done it from the house.

Maybe with Chelsea beside him.

Maybe with his mother advising.

Maybe all of them caught up in the same delusion—that if they wanted something badly enough, my life existed to fund it.

By 8:30, the lender’s fraud team had paused the loan.

By 9:05, my attorney had drafted a letter demanding preservation of all materials.

By 9:40, the title insurer was involved.

And by 10:10, I was driving back to the Mercer house—not as a wife returning to argue, but as the complainant in a financial crime.

When I walked through the front door, Chelsea was smiling over coffee.

She had no idea the apartment she thought she owned was already slipping away.

Chelsea’s smile vanished the moment she saw my face.

Good.

Not because I enjoy fear.

But because some people only start understanding reality when it arrives calmly.

Nolan was in the kitchen too, still carrying yesterday’s anger, holding a coffee mug like sleep had somehow turned fraud into a minor disagreement. His mother sat at the table with a rosary bracelet on her wrist and the confidence of someone who believed symbolism could outweigh evidence.

I set my folder on the counter.

No drama.