Chapter 4 - Facing the Ruin
The apartment was agonizingly quiet now. The mess remained—the grease, the pizza boxes, the remnants of a family that had bled me dry—but the parasites were gone.
I felt a soft, warm hand press against the back of my neck. I looked up to see Hannah kneeling beside me, despite the discomfort it caused her pregnancy. She didn't say a word; she just wrapped her arms around me and let me cry. I hadn't cried since my grandfather died, but the weight of the betrayal was too heavy to carry alone.
After a long while, I helped her up, and we moved to the bedroom, leaving the living room mess for the morning. We lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, holding hands.
"What do we do now, Marcus?" she asked softly. "The foreclosure notice... the auction is in three weeks. If we lose the land, the debt doesn't just go away. The lender might come after your wages since your signature is on the fraudulent loan document."
"Tomorrow, I'm calling out of work," I said, the decision tasting like ash in my mouth, given how much we needed the money. "We need a lawyer. And I need to go to the police station. If I don't file an official police report for forgery against my mother, the bank will legally hold me responsible for the loan."
Hannah squeezed my hand. "Are you really ready to do that? To put your mother in prison?"
I turned my head to look at her, then placed my hand on her beautiful, round belly. At that exact moment, our baby boy gave a sharp, strong kick against my palm. A wave of clarity washed over me.
"My mother chose her path when she forged my name," I said firmly. "My priority is this boy, and you. They are no longer my family. You two are."
The next morning, the reality of our situation set in. I contacted a legal aid clinic in Kansas City, and by the grace of God, we were connected with a sharp, empathetic real estate and fraud attorney named Arthur Vance.
Sitting in Arthur’s cluttered office, looking at the copies of the forged documents Hannah had salvaged, the gravity of the situation became clear.
"The forgery is amateurish at best," Arthur noted, adjusting his glasses as he compared the loan document to my actual signature on my driver's license. "But because the hard money lender was shady, they didn't properly notarize or verify your identity. They just wanted the land as collateral. Marcus, if you file a police report, we can freeze the foreclosure process under fraud statutes. But the police will investigate, and your mother will be arrested."
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"Do it," I said without a single second of hesitation.
Arthur nodded, his expression grave but respectful. "Alright. First, we go to the precinct. Then, we execute a cease-and-desist to the lender. We're going to fight this."
