Chapter 1: The Man She Married Wasn't Home
"Clean that up properly, Thomas!
If that smell of pickled peppers lingers on the floor, my daughter-in-law is going to be insufferable when she gets back from Germany."
I heard my mother-in-law's piercing voice echoing from the living room the moment I unlocked the front door of my home in Westchester, New York.
I had returned twenty-six days earlier than expected from a business trip, planning to surprise my husband.
Instead, I was the one who got surprised.
I set my suitcase quietly by the entryway and stepped into the hallway.
My father was on his knees.
At sixty-seven years old, with a hunched back and trembling hands, he was scrubbing a mess of brine, broken jars, and gourmet cheese off the marble floor—food he had brought all the way from his farm in rural Pennsylvania.
Seated on my sofa just feet away, my mother-in-law, Olivia, and my sister-in-law, Chloe, were sipping wine, watching him like he was hired help.
"I told you not to bring your country junk in here," Chloe sneered.
"We eat actual food in this house."
My face burned with instant rage.
"Dad?"
All three of them whipped their heads around.
Olivia went pale.
Chloe nearly dropped her goblet.
My father looked up at me, his eyes wide with utter shock.
"Genevieve…
did they let you out?"
I froze.
"Let me out of where?"
I pulled my father up, led him into my bedroom, and locked the door.
There, between deep sobs, he told me everything.
A week ago, my husband, Arthur, had called him in a panic, claiming I had been arrested in Germany over a major corporate financial discrepancy.
According to Arthur, I urgently needed $250,000 to cover damages and avoid spending years in an overseas prison.
Arthur had explicitly forbidden him from trying to contact me.
"If Genevieve receives any calls while under investigation, it'll ruin everything and the authorities will lock her up immediately," Arthur had warned him.
My father had believed every word.
How could he not believe the man his only daughter had been married to for eight years?
Desperate to save me, my father had signed over the deeds to his house, his farm, and even the small parcel of land where my mother was buried.
He had even signed a power of attorney so Arthur could process an urgent loan using those properties as collateral.
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The bank had released the funds that very morning.
I felt violently sick to my stomach…
