Chapter 9 - The Price of Silence
I read the note three times, certain it would change if I stared hard enough.
Ryan took one look and called Ortiz himself.
The hospital increased the restrictions on our visitors.
A nurse walked me down the NICU hallway whenever I asked, and nobody complained when I checked the identification bracelet on every person near the babies.
My doctor told me trauma could leave people jumpy, angry, and unable to sleep.
He didn't give me a speech about staying strong.
He gave me a referral, adjusted my pain medicine, and said we would take recovery one day at a time.
In the afternoon, Ryan's mother requested a meeting in the hospital lobby.
I refused.
Ryan went down alone, against my better judgment.
When he returned, his face had lost all color.
“She says Brianna owes two hundred and eighty thousand dollars,” he said.
“For what?”
“Some commercial property investment. It went bad.”
“And Diane wants us to pay it?”
“She says somebody lent Brianna the money and expects it back by Friday.”
I watched his hands curl into fists.
“Mom told me that if Brianna can't pay, the lender will come after family assets.”
“Our house?”
“That's what she claimed.”
I remembered the fake call to Naomi.
The threat wasn't just to get money.
Someone had sold Brianna a story about how easy it would be to take ours.
“Did your mother threaten me?” I asked.
Ryan looked at the closed door.
“She said she has papers proving you agreed to guarantee the loan.”
“I didn't sign anything.”
“I told her that.”
“And what did she say?”
Ryan pulled a folded photocopy from his pocket.
At the bottom of a page marked PERSONAL GUARANTY sat a signature that looked enough like mine to make my stomach tighten.
My name was there.
May you like
So was an address where I'd never lived.
And beside the false signature was the stamp of a notary who had died two years earlier.
