All Chapters of Making My Ex-Husband Crawl: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

80 Chapters

61| WHAT THE TRAP CAUGHT

Valerie's PovThe building alarm cut off after ninety seconds.Security had him contained on the second floor before the police even reached the service entrance.He had come in through the forced panel, the same one he had tested the week before and made it up one flight of stairs before the interior team closed around him.I was in the lobby watching the feed on my security lead's tablet when they brought him down.He looked smaller than I expected.That was the first thing. Not the coat, which was still the wrong one for the weather. Not his face, which was the same worn version it had been for months. The particular quality of a man who had used up everything he had on a plan that had failed in under four minutes.Two officers had his arms. He was not fighting them. He was looking at the floor."Is he hurt?" I said to my security lead."No," he said. "He came quietly when our team found him. He did not resist."The lobby doors opened. They brought him through.He looked up when

62| THE STATION

Dante's PovThe waiting room had four plastic chairs and a vending machine that hummed too loudly.We had been there for thirty minutes. Valerie was beside me with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the middle distance. She was not pacing. She was not checking her phone. She was just sitting with the particular stillness that meant she was managing something significant and had decided this was not the place to do it publicly."The asset transfers," I said. Not to start a conversation. Just to have something in the air."What about them?" she said."The administrator has been working through the list," I said."The Harrington property is already in process. The Meridian block cleared last week. The three remaining properties should complete within ten days.""With Cassian in custody it accelerates," she said."Significantly," I said. "Any legal challenge he had standing to make through a lawyer drops the moment he is formally charged. His assets are frozen as part of the criminal pr

63| OUTSIDE

Valerie's PovWe stood on the station steps at just past midnight.The air was cold and the street was quiet and neither of us was in a hurry to go anywhere."Say it," Dante said."I do not know where to start," I said."Start anywhere," he said. Same words as before. On the hillside, on the yacht. Every time I had needed to say something and did not know the shape of it yet."He altered the evidence," I said. "He named a person. Someone who actually went to the vehicle and changed what the investigators would find.I paused. "Which means there were two layers. The person who arranged it. And the person who covered it up afterwards.""Yes," Dante said."He always had two layers," I said. "The visible thing and the thing underneath. I knew that about his business. I should have understood it was true about everything.""You did not have the information," he said."I had the instinct," I said. "I always knew something was off about the accident. The way my father was driving that road.

64| THE STATEMENT WE MAKE

Dante's PovThe public defender's statement had run on three outlets by morning.I read it at six while Valerie was still asleep. Then I read the responses. The financial press was sceptical. One columnist had already noted that the statement came the same night as the arrest and the kidnapping attempt, which made the framing narrative somewhat difficult to sustain.Two others had pulled the background on the criminal case and published timelines that made the public defender's claim look exactly as weak as it was.But the tabloids were running it straight.Valerie came out at seven and I showed her the summary without preamble.She read it. Put the tablet down. Poured coffee."The tabloids are the only ones running it uncritically," she said."Yes," I said."Which means the framing narrative does not have serious traction," she said."Not yet," I said. "But the public defender is going to keep pushing it. The strategy is to create enough noise that the jury pool is contaminated befor

65| SOMETHING COMING BACK

Valerie's PovThe Harrington transfer completed at two-seventeen in the afternoon.Marcus sent me a single line. The property is yours. I read it at my desk and put the phone down and sat with it for a moment before I called Dante.He picked up on the second ring. "I saw," he said."Marcus told you first?" I said."Marcus tells me things when he thinks you might need a moment before you call," he said."That is either very thoughtful or slightly annoying," I said."Both," he said.I looked at the window. The afternoon was grey and ordinary. "It is real," I said. "The first one back. In my name. Clean.""Yes," he said."Eight years ago he bought that property with the first tranche of money he took from my father's estate," I said. "He told me it was a business investment he had been planning. He was very excited about it. He showed me photographs.""He showed you photographs of a property he bought with your money," Dante said."And I told him it looked impressive," I said. "Because i

66| ONE MORE TIME

Dante's PovShe told me about the request over dinner.Not immediately. She waited until we had finished eating and the plates were cleared and the evening was settled around us. Then she put her phone on the table with the email open and slid it toward me.I read it, put the phone down. Did not say anything for a moment."Before you say no," she said."I said no on the phone this afternoon," I said. "I am going to say it again now.""Say it then," she said."No," I said. "He asked you to come alone. Which is the same ask he made before the kidnapping attempt. The last time he requested a meeting with you alone something very specific was being planned.""He is in custody," she said."He is in a facility with a visitation room," I said. "Alone means you and him and a table between you and whatever he says.""With a guard outside," she said."With a guard outside," I said. "Yes.""And everything recorded," she said."Also yes," I said. "And I know all of that. And I still do not want y

67| WHAT HE SAID IN THAT ROOM

Valerie's PovWe drove back without speaking. Dante did not push it.He drove and I looked out the window, the city went past and neither of us said anything until we were back at the apartment and sitting at the kitchen table with tea neither of us had asked for that he had made anyway."He said he needed me to need him," I said."Yes," Dante said."He killed my father so I would have no one else," I said. "So I would be alone and grieving and frightened and there he would be. The only person left.""Yes," he said."He did not just want the money," I said. "He wanted to be the thing I depended on. He wanted to create the dependency first and then be the answer to it." I looked at the table. "He engineered the need.""Yes," Dante said. Quiet. Careful."And then for five years he made sure the dependency stayed," I said. "Every time I started to feel stronger he found a new way to make me smaller. Not because he was afraid I would leave. Because he needed me to need him. That was the w

68| BEFORE THE HEARING

Dante's PovThe prosecutor's team sent the hearing documents at seven in the morning.I was already at my desk. I read through the full package while Valerie was on the phone with Marcus in the other room.The hearing was in four days, not the full trial. A preliminary hearing to determine the admissibility of Cassian's statements.His public defender was arguing that the gate recording, the station confession, and the visitation room recording were all obtained under conditions that made them inadmissible.It was a long argument with thin legs. But thin-legged arguments still needed answering.Valerie came in when I was on the third document."Marcus says the DA's team is confident," she said. "The gate recording issue has been resolved. The supplementary basis for admissibility they found covers it.""The station confession is clean," I said. "He waived counsel voluntarily. The officer's account confirms there was no pressure.""And the visitation room," she said. She sat across fro

69| THE CORRIDOR BEFORE

Valerie's PovThe courthouse was busier than I expected.We arrived forty minutes early because Marcus had insisted on it and Marcus was usually right about these things.Dante and I stood in the corridor outside the hearing room while our legal team went through the final briefing inside. The hallway had the particular quiet of a place designed for it. E Just people and the sound of their shoes on the floor."After this," I said."Yes," he said."Dinner," I said. "The place near the water.""Yes," he said."And then Portugal," I said."And then Portugal," he said.I looked back at the corridor. The doors at the far end. The ordinary business of the building going on around something that was not ordinary at all."Thank you," I said. "For being here.""There is nowhere else I would be," he said.The legal team came out. Marcus gave me a brief nod that meant everything was in order. We moved to the hearing room.It was a mid-sized courtroom. Not the large public space. A room for serio

70| IN OPEN COURT

Dante's PovThe recess lasted twelve minutes.I used them to stand in the corridor with Valerie and the DA and say very little because there was very little to say that was useful."He is naming an accomplice," the DA said. Her voice was tight. Professional tight, not panicked. "Or claiming one. We need to understand which before the session resumes.""Can you question him during the recess?" I said."He is representing himself," she said. "Any conversation I have with him on the record has to go through the court. Off the record he will not speak to me." She looked at Valerie. "Did you have any indication of this in the visitation room?""No," Valerie said. "He said he did it himself.""He said he changed the tires himself," I said. "That does not exclude someone else being present.""That is the argument he is going to make," the DA said. "That doing it himself and having someone with him are not mutually exclusive.""Who could it have been?" Valerie said."Unknown," the DA said. "W

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