By evening, the apartment felt suffocating. Adrian sat at the dining table with his laptop open, bank statements spread out like evidence at a crime scene. Mei stood across from him, arms crossed. She wasn’t shouting, but her quiet anger was terrifying. “How much?” she asked.
He told her the number once, and she made him repeat it. Mei sat down heavily, without even pulling her chair out, as if her knees had given way. To them, $500,000 wasn’t just a number. It represented a secure retirement for her parents, Daniel’s first apartment, and the future they thought they were building.
Adrian tried to explain that he had believed the statements and that Victor had paid out returns for years. But his excuses sounded empty against the damage done. Mei looked at him as if he were a stranger. “You dragged us into this,” she said. He wanted to say he was a victim too, but looking at the spreadsheet, he realized his good intentions didn’t matter anymore.