Second, I hired my own attorney — quietly, paid from an account Julian didn’t know existed — and I started pulling threads.
And the threads led straight to a name.
Vanessa Hale was an attorney.
Specifically, she specialized in guardianships and conservatorships — the legal process by which a court can declare an adult unfit to manage their own life and hand control of everything they own to someone else.
She had, my lawyer discovered, already opened a preliminary file.
On me.
A file quietly building the case that Sofia — forgetful, bruised, unstable, prone to blackouts her own husband would tearfully testify to — needed a conservator.
And the proposed conservator, the loving husband who would reluctantly take control of his poor sick wife’s trust and her father’s firm, was Julian.
Vanessa was not his accomplice by accident.
Vanessa was his partner — in the con and, I would learn, in the bed I’d thought was only mine.
