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"Make this make sense to me, Hunter," I plead. "Why would my father do this? He gave me the postcards Layla sent. He said he spoke to her."
"We think the postcards are fake, and her phone record shows no calls coming in since January."
He picks up a piece of paper from the floor and shows it to me. At the top is Layla’s number, and it's from the phone company.
He's right. The document confirms that no calls were made since January. In fact, the last number to call Layla then was mine.
"What if my father has a different number for her?"
"If he did, why wouldn't he share that number with you?" Hunter counters and his eyes blaze with fury. "Luna, you need to listen to me. Your father isn't the man you think he is."
I take a closer look at him and notice the wealth of hatred brimming in his eyes, along with the deep-rooted anger in his expression. I stare and realize that Hunter looks like he truly hates my father.
That look, it didn't just come from the discovery about Layla. The emotions I witness playing out on his face are too raw, too deep, too old.
"You sound like he did something to you," I say that with a question in my voice, searching for an answer.
"He did," Hunter sighs, but his face is still a mask of stone.
"What did he do to you? Why have you never told me?"
"It's complicated."
"Tell me now. What did my father do to you?"
When he looks away from me, an ominous feeling settles between us. It whispers to my heart that the real pain is about to strike.
When Hunter looks back at me, the hardness in his eyes melts away, but only for a moment before it returns.
"A year ago, your father set me up to go to prison. I was able to clear my name, but I almost lost everything. My family also almost lost Le Blanche Global."
Shock shoots through my body from my head down to my spine, rooting me to the spot.
Suddenly, I feel like that unknown something that disconnected me from him is unraveling itself.
"My father did that to you?" I mumble.
"Yes."
"I don't understand. Why?"
"Let me explain it to you, all of it, my part and his."
He starts by telling me what Dad did. About the fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement Dad wanted to pin on him. Then Hunter goes on to explain how he found out that he suspects Dad of arranging to kill the other analyst who was working with him.
When he reaches the part about how he planned to destroy my father and that our marriage was part of that plan, I want the earth to swallow me whole.
I want the earth to devour me until there's nothing left of me and I've been cleansed of this reality.
Hunter stops talking at the same time I stop breathing, and all I can do is stare back at him in shock, disbelief, horror, and disappointment.
Every word sinks into my soul with the painful, awful truth that our marriage was nothing but a sham.
On trembling legs I stand, feeling like I might wither away in the slightest breeze. Hunter rises, too, and steps towards me.
"Luna..."
"No." I stop him and step back, shaking my head. "You're telling me we weren't real? You only married me because of some plan to get back at my father?”
