He Wanted a Fake Divorce for the Payout, I Gave Him a Real One for the Payback Chapter 06

He Wanted a Fake Divorce for the Payout, I Gave Him a Real One for the Payback Chapter 06

When I walked out of the city inspectors Office, the blazing sun struck my face like a physical blow.

I stood on the baking asphalt, watching the crowd drift past me in a blur.

Darren. Lorna.

You two were something else.

You had played me too. Made a fool out of me like I was some trained monkey.

I took out my phone and opened the anonymous text again.

[Keep your mouth shut, or your parents in that nursing home will pay for it.]

Since they had dragged my parents into this, they had no right to blame me for what came next.

I flagged down a cab. “Take me to the junkyard on the south side.”

That was where my parents were living.

Darren had called it a nursing home, but in reality, it was a filthy, unlicensed care home behind a scrap yard, packed with garbage and swarming with flies and mosquitoes.

The stench of industrial grease and human neglect choked me fifty yards out.

I pushed it open and saw my father sitting in a wheelchair under the sun.

His clothes were so dirty I could no longer tell what color they had been, and drool hung from the corner of his mouth.

My mother was crouched in the corner, picking rotten lettuce leaves off the ground and stuffing them into her mouth.

“Mom!” I rushed over and snatched the spoiled leaves from her hand.

Eileen lifted her head. Her cloudy pupils rolled up to fix on me, and she gave me a foolish little smile. “Clara? Is that you?”

A hot surge of tears stung my eyes, but I swallowed them down, turning the grief into pure, unadulterated rage.

“Dad, Mom, I’m sorry… I came too late.”

I wiped their faces and gave them water.

How much had Darren been paying the caregiver every month?

Five hundred dollars?

That was not even enough to feed a dog properly.

I searched the room, trying to find clean clothes for them. Under the bed, inside a battered old box, I found a worn notebook.

It was Nathan’s journal.

A photo was tucked inside, revealing Lorna pressed up against a man who definitely wasn’t my brother.

The man was not Nathan.

He was not Darren either.

He was a stranger, a chubby middle-aged man with a greasy face.

On the back of the photo, a single line was scrawled in thick permanent marker:

[Debt: $70,000. Collateral.]

My heart tightened, and I opened the journal.

Nathan’s handwriting was neat and steady.

[March 5. Lorna borrowed $70,000 from a loan shark. She said it was for a business. I told her not to, but she did it behind my back. The man’s name is Mickey Rourke. He said if she didn’t pay him back, he’d take her hand.]

[March 10. Mickey came to the door. I agreed to help pay him back, but only if Lorna and I ended things for good.]

[April 1. I worked overtime at the construction site. I wanted to make more money. Lorna told me she had thought it through and was going to end the pregnancy…]

The journal stopped there.

The next day, Nathan had his accident.

A car crash.

I gripped the notebook so hard the cheap paper tore beneath my thumbs.

So Nathan had known about Lorna all along.

Then that accident…

Had it really been an accident?

And Mickey, that chubby middle-aged man. Could he be the father of the baby in Lorna’s stomach?

If that was true, then who had Darren been covering for?

Lorna?

Or himself?

No.

That did not make sense.

Darren was a parasite who counted every single penny down to the last penny. If the baby were not his, why would he claim it?

Unless…

I thought of the redevelopment agreement Darren had signed.

Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Was that payout meant to cover the loan-shark debt?

Or had Mickey forced them into all of this?

I shoved the journal inside my coat and held my parents tight.

“Dad, Mom. We’re going home.”