“Are you certain?”
“I know my own signature.”
She leaned closer.
One document had been dated on her eighteenth birthday, when she had been attending a school examination several hundred miles away. Another carried her signature on a day she remembered visiting her father’s grave with her aunt.
“These are fake,” she whispered.
Matthew watched her expression change.
For years, Elena had believed Isabel’s claim that her father’s business had collapsed and left the family drowning in debt. She had accepted restrictions on her spending, her education, and even her friendships because she thought she was helping the household survive.
Now she was discovering that the poverty she had endured might have been a carefully constructed lie.
“Why would she do this to me?” Elena asked.
Matthew answered honestly.
“Money gives some people a reason to betray others. Control gives them a reason to keep doing it.”
Elena stood and walked to the window.
