My Fiancé Demanded I Take a Night Shift to Fund His Ex-Girlfriend’s Career Break, So I Audited His Secret Accounts and Left Them Both With Nothing

By Sunday evening, the pressure had completely cracked their united front.

Ryan’s mother called my apartment four times, attempting to offer a "family settlement" where she would pay back half the money if I agreed not to contact the licensing board.

I didn't answer a single call. I simply let the automated machine record her desperate rambling.

At nine o'clock that night, someone knocked softly on my front door.

I looked through the peephole and saw Paige standing alone in the hallway. She wasn't wearing her expensive cashmere sweater or carrying her designer coffee cup. She was dressed in an oversized gray hoodie, her face scrubbed clean of makeup, looking terrified and utterly defeated.

I opened the door, keeping the security chain engaged.

"What do you want, Paige?"

Paige looked at the narrow opening, her lower lip trembling. "Ryan can't get the money, Lena. His credit is maxed out, and his mother’s savings are tied up in certificates of deposit."

"Then you have fourteen hours before I file the fraud report," I replied through the crack.

"I have the money," Paige whispered, pulling a certified bank cashier's check from her hoodie pocket.

I looked at the blue paper in her fingers.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.

"I sold my car," she said, tears finally spilling over her cheeks. "And I took back my old job at the insurance agency. They agreed to let me return if I signed a two-year retention contract on the phones."

The irony was almost poetic.

The woman who claimed she was too fragile to work, who needed a "softer landing" funded by my midnight shifts, was now locked into a two-year desk job just to keep her fraudulent business license from being revoked.

"Slide the check under the door," I instructed.

She hesitated, her fingers clutching the paper for one last second before she knelt down and slipped the check beneath the wooden sill.

I picked it up, examined the embossed watermark, and verified the amount: eight thousand dollars, made out directly to Lena Vance.

"We're square on the municipal filing," I said. "Tell Ryan that his remaining possessions will be in storage locker fourteen on Elm Street. The combination is his old birthday."

"Lena," Paige called out as I began to shut the door. "Did you ever really love him?"

I paused, looking at her through the narrow sliver of light.