She Taught Him How To Love: He Used It To Destroy Me Chapter 03

She Taught Him How To Love: He Used It To Destroy Me Chapter 03

He didn’t answer.

Half an hour later, I used the spare key to open the door to Pinnacle Heights.

My slippers were still by the entrance.

Next to them sat a pair of heels.

Vanessa was on the living room couch, wearing the Hand-knitted Socks my mom had made for me last year.

I stared at them.

“Take them off.”

Vanessa glanced down.

“They’re just socks,” she said.

“A truly independent woman doesn’t project her emotions onto objects.”

I bent down to pull them off her feet.

The study door swung open.

Ethan strode over and grabbed my arm.

“That’s enough,” he said.

“Vanessa’s just wearing them for a second.”

Looking at him, I suddenly remembered four years ago, when we first moved in. He placed the key in my palm.

“This is our home now,” he’d said.

“You can come back anytime.”

I pulled my arm free and stumbled backward, my lower back hitting the desk.

The drawer jolted open a crack.

Inside sat an Equity Purchase Agreement.

Ethan had put two hundred eighty thousand dollars into Vanessa’s new course company for fifteen percent of the shares.

The signing date was the day my mom went into the ICU.

Three years ago, Ethan’s studio had a cash flow crisis.

My mom sold the only house in Oakridge and loaned him the full two hundred eighty thousand.

The Promissory Note said he’d pay it back in two years.

He kept putting it off.

Every time my mom asked, he’d hold her hand.

“Mom, just give me a little more time,” he’d say.

“Once Ivy and I get married, your money is our money.”

But my mom waited until she had a Stroke, and he wouldn’t even give her twenty thousand.

Meanwhile, that two hundred eighty thousand went straight into Vanessa’s company.

“Why is my mom’s money in there?” I asked.

Ethan slammed the agreement shut.

“What do you mean your mom’s money?” he said.

“The Loan went into the company. That makes it company assets.”

“The company has the right to decide how to invest it.”

I looked at him.

“Investing in Vanessa is an investment,” I said.

“What do you call giving my mom twenty thousand?”

Vanessa leaned against the doorframe.

“Filling a bottomless pit,” she said.

“Twenty thousand today, rehab costs tomorrow, Senior Care the day after.”

“If Ethan doesn’t set Boundaries now, you two will drag him down for the rest of his life.”

I pulled the drawer open again. The agreement’s note section read:

[MC-01 Project – Initial Payment.]

Ethan snatched it away.

“Company internal document,” he said.

“You have no right to see this.”

“You took my mom’s money and put it into a project with her initials on it.”

His throat moved.

“MC is just a code.”

Vanessa walked over to him.

The new bracelet on her wrist caught the light.

Suddenly, the place I’d lived in for four years felt unbearably foreign.

My clothes, my mugs, my photos were all here.

But standing inside it, I felt like a stranger.

My mom woke up on the third afternoon.

The doctor said she had temporary aphasia and had lost feeling in her right side.

When I walked into her room, she was struggling to reach for her phone with her left hand.

The screen was flooded with texts from strangers.

[Just die already—your death will prove your daughter’s innocence.]

[If you raised a daughter like that, you’re no better than her.]

I grabbed the phone and turned it off.

My mom’s lips kept trembling.

The nurse handed her paper and a pen.

She gripped it with her left hand, each stroke shaky and crooked.

After a long time, she managed three words:

[Do we have enough?]

I crouched beside the bed.

“Yes,” I said.

“The company paid me early.”

She stared at my face. She clearly didn’t believe me.

“Really. We have enough.”

Tears spilled down my mom’s cheeks.

Her right arm wouldn’t move, so she used her left hand to clumsily pat my head.

The door pushed open.

Ethan walked in, carrying Pumpkin Bread.

“Mrs. Clarke, you’re awake?”