Chapter 3 - Digging Deeper
I spent the rest of the weekend quietly pulling the threads of their meticulously constructed web, discovering that the scar was merely the first visible crack in a foundation built entirely on lies.
If Natalie knew about the scar with such absolute precision, what else did she know? And more importantly, what did Ryan know about her life that he was hiding from me?
On Sunday evening, while Ryan was downstairs watching a football game and nursing a beer, I quietly unlocked his home office desk drawer using a spare key I found in his gym bag. Ryan wasn't a criminal mastermind; he was a lazy cheater who assumed his digital life was completely secure simply because he locked his phone screen.
He had forgotten about his old corporate laptop—the one he used before switching to his current remote job.
I pulled the dusty machine from the back of the closet, plugged it into the charger, and booted it up. It took three tries, but I guessed his old childhood pet’s name for the password. The desktop lit up, displaying rows of unsorted folders.
I didn't need to look through months of data. I went straight to his web browser history, synced to his old Google account, and opened Google Drive.
There it was. A folder titled “Blue Ridge Cabin - Receipts & Itineraries.”
I clicked open the PDF files. My breath caught in my throat.
Over the past eight months, Ryan had booked a secluded mountain cabin in Blue Ridge, Virginia, no less than six times. Weekend getaways where he claimed he was attending corporate leadership retreats in Chicago or client golf trips in Myrtle Beach. And the reservation names? Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Turner.
Turner. Natalie’s maiden name. Or rather, the name she still used on her secondary bank statements.
They hadn't just been sneaking around behind my back on random Tuesday afternoons. They had been taking mini-vacations, living a domestic fantasy, sharing meals, sleeping in a king-sized bed, and laughing at my expense while I held down our household, paid half the mortgage, and comforted Natalie during her supposed “dating struggles.”
As I scrolled further down the folder, I found something even more damning. A scanned copy of a signed real estate binder. Ryan and Natalie had put down a ten-thousand-dollar cash deposit on a joint investment property three towns over, using funds drawn from our joint savings account—money I had inherited from my grandfather’s estate.
They weren't just playing around. They were quietly liquidating our marriage to fund their future life together, assuming I was too blind, too trusting, and too weak to ever investigate.
I sat back in the leather chair, staring at the glowing monitor screen. A cold, surgical calm washed over me. The pain of the betrayal had already burned itself out, replaced by a fierce, unyielding clarity.
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They thought they had outsmarted me. They thought I was a fool.
By Monday morning, I was going to show them just how devastatingly wrong they were.
