Chapter 5: The Third Person in the Room
My mother answered on the first ring, which meant she had been waiting.
"Charlotte, your father and I saw the missed call from this morning.
What's going on?
Are you all right?"
"Mom, I need you to listen to me and not panic."
A pause.
"You're scaring me."
"Someone forged my signature on a property deed.
They transferred the apartment into Zachary's name six days ago.
My attorney is already working on it, but I need to know — has anyone contacted you or Dad recently about the apartment?
Anyone asking questions about the title, the original purchase, anything like that?"
Silence on the other end.
Longer than I expected.
"Mom."
"There was a man," she said slowly.
"About two months ago.
He called your father.
Said he was from a property management company.
He asked about the original purchase price, whether the deed was in your name alone, whether there was a mortgage."
My stomach dropped.
"What did Dad tell him?"
"He thought it was routine.
A survey of some kind.
He answered the questions." Her voice had gone thin.
"Charlotte, what did we do?"
"You didn't do anything wrong.
You didn't know." I kept my voice even.
"Do you remember the man's name?"
"He left a voicemail.
Your father might still have it."
"I need that voicemail, Mom.
Today if possible."
Twenty minutes later, my father called me back.
He had found it.
He read me the name from the voicemail.
Raymond Fitch.
Property Consultation Services, Chula Vista.
The same name as the notary.
He wasn't just the notary.
He had been gathering information on my property for months, feeding it back to Brenda and Zachary so they could build a forgery precise enough to pass a title search.
I called Dana back immediately.
"The notary called my parents two months ago posing as a property management surveyor," I said.
"He collected the original purchase details directly from my father.
That's how they got everything they needed for the forged deed."
"That ties him directly to the conspiracy," Dana said.
"This is no longer just a domestic dispute, Charlotte.
This is organized property fraud.
I'm calling the DA's office now."
"There's something else." I hesitated.
"In the earliest footage, Brenda mentioned my parents.
She said they wouldn't know what hit them.
I think they were planning to use the deed to force a sale or take out a loan against the property — something that would have been nearly impossible to reverse once it was recorded."
"They were right about that.
A recorded deed, even a fraudulent one, creates a title cloud that can take months to clear without a court order.
If Zachary had moved quickly — refinanced, taken out a line of credit — you could have been fighting this for years."
"Why didn't they move faster?"
Dana was quiet for a moment.
"The assault this morning.
I think that was supposed to happen differently.
I think Brenda expected you to be frightened enough to leave the apartment voluntarily.
If you walked out and Zachary stayed, he could have started the financial process immediately.
The deed was already recorded.
He just needed possession."
I thought about the House Rules sheet.
The handwritten list.
Wake up at five thirty.
Ask Brenda for permission.
It wasn't about control.
It was about driving me out.
"She wanted me to leave on my own," I said.
"And when you didn't — when you called the police instead — the plan collapsed.
That's why Brenda made that comment about what had already been filed.
She was trying to frighten you into thinking it was too late.
That you'd already lost."
"She almost succeeded."
"Almost," Dana said.
"But you had a camera."
I looked down at my phone.
Eleven clips.
A forged deed.
A fake notary.
A man who had called my father pretending to run surveys.
And somewhere in those recordings, a voice I still hadn't identified.
"Dana, there's a third person.
Someone Brenda was calling in the early footage.
A man.
I haven't been able to identify the voice."
"Send me everything.
All eleven clips.
Tonight."
I pulled out of the hospital parking lot and drove toward my parents' house with the afternoon sun flat and white against the windshield.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Zachary.
*Come home.
We can talk about this like adults.
My mother overreacted and I'm sorry.
Let's not make this bigger than it needs to be.*
I read it twice.
Then I screenshotted it and forwarded it to Dana without responding.
Whatever he thought he still had over me, he was about to find out he was wrong.
But first I needed to know who that third voice belonged to.
Because Dana was right.
Raymond Fitch didn't build this alone.
Someone with legal knowledge had designed it.
May you like
Someone who understood title law, notary procedures, and exactly how long a fraudulent deed could sit on record before anyone noticed.
Someone who had done this before.
