“You have no proof of criminal intent.”
Then Emiliano stepped forward and destroyed his own defense without realizing it.
“You owe me after everything I invested in us.”
I stared at him.
“Invested? The rent you never paid? The groceries? The ring you took from my closet? Or the money you tried to move while I was asleep?”
His face changed.
For the first time, there was no charm left. No script. No easy escape.
And I understood, with brutal clarity, that the most rotten part of this story still had not surfaced.
PART 3
Three days later, the financial crimes unit confirmed what I had already begun to suspect: the transfer attempt had been made using my home internet and credentials stored on my computer. Grupo Altacrest Consultoría had been registered only two weeks earlier.
The company’s legal representative was not Emiliano.
It was Patricia—his mother.
The moment I heard that, something inside me changed for good. I was no longer dealing with just a liar and a cheater. I was dealing with a scammer who had been raised by a woman who spent years excusing his crimes as flaws in personality.
The investigation uncovered more dirt than I thought possible. Lara remembered that Emiliano had asked strange questions about the clients of her ex-husband, a financial adviser who worked with real-estate developers. A former coworker from the agency where he worked said client deposit money had gone missing. A previous landlord said Emiliano had invented a family emergency to delay eviction. Then a woman from Querétaro contacted me through social media to ask whether I was “the new girlfriend,” because a year earlier he had disappeared with furniture bought on her credit card.
