Chapter 3 - Ashford Next
The photograph came from a storage unit rented under Victoria's maiden name.
Police found files inside.
Not just mine.
Other women.
Five folders.
Each labeled with a surname.
Whitaker.
Donovan.
Ellis.
Roth.
Ashford.
Mine was last.
ASHFORD NEXT.
The women had something in common.
Money.
One owned dental practices.
One inherited farmland.
One had a successful technology company.
One was recently widowed.
Detectives contacted them.
Three recognized Daniel.
One recognized Margaret.
A woman named Helen Roth had dated Daniel briefly before he met me.
“He wanted to marry me after six months,” she said.
“Why didn't you?”
“My accountant found inconsistencies.”
“What kind?”
“He asked me to invest in a company that didn't exist.”
Helen ended the relationship.
Two weeks later, someone broke into her house.
Nothing major was stolen.
But she became frightened and moved.
The Whitaker file belonged to a woman who had dated Preston.
Daniel's brother.
Suddenly the scope widened.
Margaret wasn't simply using Daniel.
She was using her children.
Caroline had also been involved in relationships with wealthy partners.
This family had turned romance into acquisition.
Rebecca called it “predatory courtship.”
I called it sick.
Then detectives found a spreadsheet.
Potential targets.
Net worth.
Family status.
Property.
Emotional vulnerabilities.
My entry read:
CLAIRE ASHFORD
FATHER DECEASED
NO SIBLINGS
ESTATE OWNER
EST. LIQUID ASSETS: $8M+
HIGH TRUST / LOW FAMILY SUPPORT
GOOD LONG-TERM TARGET
I stared at the words.
High trust.
Low family support.
They hadn't chosen me only because I had money.
They chose me because I was alone.
My father had died.
My mother had passed years earlier.
No siblings.
No close relatives asking questions.
They saw grief and called it opportunity.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I walked through the mansion.
My father's library.
My mother's piano.
The staircase where Daniel proposed.
Suddenly every memory felt contaminated.
Then I stopped.
No.
Daniel didn't get to own the past retroactively.
My father had built that home.
My mother had chosen the wallpaper in the breakfast room.
I had spent childhood Christmases beside that fireplace.
Daniel was six years.
The house was generations.
He had entered my story.
He had not authored it.
That distinction became my anchor.
The next morning, Rebecca brought good news.
The forged loans were unraveling.
The banks acknowledged major authentication failures.
My liability was likely limited.
The mansion couldn't be legally sold without my valid authorization.
Daniel's plan depended on getting me out long enough to forge the final transfer.
“How?”
“They prepared a deed.”
My blood went cold.
A deed transferring the mansion from me into an LLC.
My signature was already on it.
Forged.
Not yet recorded.
“Why not?”
“Notarization problem.”
The notary backed out.
“Who?”
Rebecca smiled.
“A woman named Susan Bell.”
Susan had refused because I wasn't physically present.
Margaret allegedly offered her twenty thousand dollars.
Susan reported it.
That report had been sitting in a county fraud queue.
Now it mattered.
The family had been days away from attempting to steal the mansion.
And the night Daniel hit me?
They had planned to force me out.
Not permanently through violence.
Through humiliation.
They expected me to leave voluntarily.
Then they would claim marital breakdown.
While I was gone, the deed would be filed.
My own instinct to call Rebecca had interrupted the plan.
One phone call.
That was all it took.
But Victoria still had millions offshore.
And she was still in Portugal.
Then Interpol received information that changed everything.
Victoria had booked a flight.
Not away from investigators.
Toward us.
May you like
She was coming back to the United States.
And her ticket had been purchased the morning after Daniel's arrest.
