by Claire Adams
“You should go out to those dance clubs with that funny friend of yours. I bet there’s a lot of nice boys at the dance clubs.”
I had to laugh at how Mary thought about dating in the current day. Sure, there were a lot of men at the dance clubs, but they weren’t the kind of guys you started relationships with. The guys I had met at clubs were pretty much only good for one-night stands and nothing more than that. Online dating didn’t seem to be much better, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved in the whole matchmaking business.
Dating and finding someone to fall in love with seemed so overwhelming now that things were crumbling with Brandon. I couldn’t even think of getting back out in the market until I figured out what had gone wrong with choosing him. He had felt so right to me. I felt good around him and that was hard to understand now that other things were coming out. Nope, I was definitely going to be taking a dating break.
“Yeah, my friend Mattie wanted me to go out with her this weekend. She always wants to go out now that she broke up with that jerk of a boyfriend.”
“You should go out. We can keep Connor here again.”
“No, no, he’s already stayed over for two weekends. I can’t have him imposing on your guys all the time.”
“Imposing,” she said loudly. “Absolutely not! Connor is our grandson, and we love having him here. I’d come over and steal him from you every weekend if you’d let me.”
“I know you guys love him and he really does love coming over, I just don’t think going out three weekends in a row is a good idea. Plus, have you seen my dance moves? I’m no good at dancing, anyways,” I laughed.
“You stop it right now, young lady. I’ve decided already that Connor and I have a date Friday, so you’ll just have to go out with your friends. He’s wanted to see that new animated movie and I really want some buttered popcorn. So it’s decided. I’ll get him from school Friday, and you can go do whatever you want to do. You can just sit in your bathtub and read a book for all I care; but take some time and relax or go out and have fun.”
“I remember Spencer telling me about this bossy side of yours,” I teased. “Fine, I’ll let you take him to the movies.”
She reached her arms around me and hugged me tighter than I’d been hugged in a very long time. I loved the feeling of her arms wrapped around me and the comfort I felt there with Mary. For a moment, I considered telling her everything that was going on with Brandon, but I decided against it. When I knew more, then I’d tell her.
We spent the rest of the evening as a family, cooking dinner, eating around the table, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. I hoped that when I finally found someone else, they’d be able to understand just how much Mary and Steve would always mean to Connor and I. It was a tall order to think that a new man would be accepting of my late husband’s parents, but if I ever actually settled down, I wanted to find someone that had a heart big enough to understand this complex part of my past.
By the time I was driving home with Connor, we were both exhausted. Visiting others almost always took an emotional toll on me. I had to be happy and funny. I had to interact without making them sad because of the loss we’d endured. Even though I felt very comfortable with Mary and Steve, I still had the stress of trying to show them how well adjusted I was.
When we pulled into the driveway and climbed into our beds, there was a relief that drained from me. At home, I could be myself. In my own bed, I didn’t have to worry about making anyone else happy or if they were uncomfortable because I brought up my late husband. In my house, all I had to worry about was me and my son; I really liked that.
But when I was with Brandon, I hadn’t worried, either. As much as I tried not to think about him, as I lay in my bed, I did think about Brandon and just how comfortable I was around him. I knew Connor would have been comfortable with him, too, and that made me incredibly sad.
There were three voicemails from Brandon that I deleted without even listening to them. My life was complicated enough – I didn’t need whatever was going on in his life interfering with the stability I had built for Connor and me.
Chapter 18
Brandon
“Everything is frozen, Josh!” I screamed into the phone after trying to use my card to get coffee.
Not only was my credit card frozen, my bank account, my brokerage account, everything had been frozen. When I called the bank, they said it was frozen from an unknown entity. There weren’t enough swear words to encapsulate how I was feeling.
“I’ll meet you at your house.”
“No, I’m going to my attorney’s. You can meet me there if you’d like. It’s Sunset and Twelfth.”
I had waited long enough to get the attorney involved – probably too long. I had to get him and the private investigator figuring this mess out. My life was falling apart right before my eyes. Delilah hadn’t returned my calls all week, my house had been broken into two additional times, and now my money was all frozen. It didn’t seem like this was my life – it seemed more like I was living a nightmare.
When I arrived at my attorney’s office, he was waiting for me. My frantic call to him before calling Josh had been enough to get him to cancel whatever else he had scheduled for the day and get me in.
People of my stature just didn’t get their accounts frozen for no reason. No agency wanted to be involved in such high profile cases and when they were, I was certain they would follow all the rules. Something outside of the rules was going on with my life at the moment and I needed all the help possible to figure it out.
“Okay, sit down, tell me what’s going on,” Dick Anderson, my lawyer, said as I walked into his office.
I went over everything with Dick, and the private investigator came in and filled him in on the other details I hadn’t learned yet. My life was an absolute disaster and neither man could figure out what had started it all or how we were going to get my accounts unfrozen.
“You haven’t received any notices in the mail regarding your accounts being seized?” Mr. Anderson asked.
“Seized? What do you mean seized? Holly hell, is the government going to take all my money? What’s going on here, Dick? I’ve done nothing. I’m not guilty of anything, except maybe a little stupidity. Billy, tell him what you found out about the official investigation.”
“Yeah, it’s not official, as far as I can tell. From what I’ve been able to find out, it’s something more personal. I’ll need access to someone at your bank to confirm who froze the accounts, though.”
“Is your brokerage account connected to the bank?”
“Yeah, it’s connected to my savings account.”
“Well, at least that solves a little bit of this. It all seems to originate at the bank, or at least that’s one of the big areas we need to look.”
As Billy and Dick started to coordinate their attack, I sat quietly and let them work. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but I was becoming more and more confident that it was going to come out very soon.
“Hey, guys, my ex-wife is calling; I’m going to take this out in the hall,” I said when Rose’s number popped up on my screen.
“Hi, Brandon. I hate to bother you but I’ve got some forms I need you to fill out before I get married next month.”
“Sure, what are they about?”
“I’m not sure, just some stuff that Carlos and his lawyer put together. You can come get them and have your attorney take a look, if you like. I think it’s about stock options or something.”
“Stock options?”
“Yeah, I don’t know exactly. You’ll have to look at it. You know I’m not technical like you are.”
“Sure, I’ll come grab them later today. I’ve got to run for now.”
“What was that all about?” Dick asked when I returned.
“I’m not sure. Rose said she needed me to sign something before she married Carlos. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“She probably wants to keep her alimony.
It’s no big deal; I’ll take a look at it. Now, let’s get back to the problem at hand. Billy has the bank on the line and they need to confirm your identity before they will answer any questions.”
“Sure, but I was on with them before and they weren’t very helpful,” I took the phone from Billy and flipped it to speaker. “This is Brandon Baker; what do you need to verify?”
The woman was nice enough, but she went on and on with verification questions for at least five minutes before she would actually answer anything we had to ask. It was comical to me how hard it was for me to get information about my own account, considering how easily someone seemed to be able to block my account.
“Mr. Baker, your account was flagged for fraud last week; is that correct?”
“Yes, but it was a misunderstanding with my ex-wife. Everything was straightened out.”
“Okay, well, it appears an outside agency has frozen your accounts. They accessed through your credit cards. So you could start by looking for who had access to your card ending in zero-two-seven-eight.”
“Wait, so it’s fraudulently frozen and you can’t unfreeze it?”
“At this point, I’m going to ask for an investigation because I can’t tell who has actually activated the freeze. Normally if it was activated by a court order or government agency, we would have that legal document on file. So from what I’m seeing, it appears to be an illegal freeze.”
“Great, so you can fix it?” Dick asked.
“No, sir. I can ask for it to be investigated.”
“So, you think it is frozen by an illegal means, yet you won’t unfreeze any of his accounts?” Billy asked. “How long will it take for your investigation?”
“Three to five weeks.”
All three of us burst into laughter at the same time. The bank was practically admitting that some illegal person had frozen my accounts, yet they were in absolutely no hurry to fix the problem or offer me any sort of timely assistance.
“So what should Mr. Baker do for money until the time that your bank can verify this is a fake freeze?”
“You are welcome to come in and open up a line of credit if you’d like. I see you are a loyal customer and we’d be happy to extend the credit to you while this is getting straightened out.”
“Fine, I will come down right away,” I said grumpily. “How long will it take to get the funds from the loan?”
“Oh, you will get them right away, after the loan has been processed, which only takes forty-eight hours. But it is the weekend coming up, too, so I’d estimate it will be processed by Tuesday.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Dick in search of some sort of answer to this issue, but he only shrugged his shoulders. I was at the mercy of the bank and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. One thing I knew for sure, though: when this mess was figured out, I would be switching my accounts to a different bank. The security at this one was horrible.
“Thank you for your help,” I managed to muster before hanging up. “You know, I haven’t used that credit card for anything in a long time. Oh wait, I did use it,” I said as I pulled the account up on my phone. “I used it to join Dating the Rich.”
“Is that the only place you’ve used it?”
“Yep, I think so.”
“Weren’t you dating a girl from there? Josh said there was some trouble with you and her,” Billy asked and I felt the blood rushing from my extremities to my heart.
“Yeah,” I responded. “She’s pissed at me and not returning calls.”
“Just playing devil’s advocate again: is it possible she is an identity thief?”
“No.”
“Let’s look at what we have going on here. Your problems started after you met her. The bank has evidence that the attack on your accounts originated from the credit card you have on file with her company. And, she’s suddenly disappeared from your life?”
When he said it like that, it didn’t look good. Delilah wasn’t some sort of identity thief, though; she wasn’t causing all this trouble in my life. It just wasn’t possible.
“It’s not her,” I quietly mumbled as I continued to think through everything that had happened. “Josh told me there were scam artists on that site. I don’t think she is one. We connected. I really like her.”
“Brandon, I hate to break it to you, but scam artists are really good at what they do. If they were bad at it, they wouldn’t make any money. Using a good-looking young lady like that is just one of the tricks to their trade. You said there was a man who visited you. Was it possible he was just casing the joint as part of a larger team?”
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. I guess he could have been there to case the joint. He seemed to know a lot about me and my former business partner, though.”
“These sophisticated networks of thieves work closely together. They sometimes even infiltrate your friends and marry people close to the target in an effort to swindle people. I’ve seen a lot of really wild things. It doesn’t surprise me that you liked this girl. They probably hired her because she was someone they thought would appeal to you,” Billy explained.
“Man, I’ve heard of these scams, Brandon,” Dick added. “We can find them and sue them if there isn’t enough evidence for criminal charges. Don’t you worry; we will get revenge.”
I was dumbfounded by everything the guys were saying. It just wasn’t possible that Delilah was part of this scam. I couldn’t believe it and I wouldn’t until I talked to her. She and I had a real connection that couldn’t have been faked. Plus, we’d slept together. We talked about our losses and that wasn’t a lie: I saw it in her eyes when she talked about her late husband.
“Are they going to take all of my money?”
“No, no, no. The bank won’t let them pull that money out. Most likely they are freezing it and then will get in contact with you and request a sort of ransom in exchange for giving you access to your accounts again,” Billy continued to explain. “They know it takes banks months to straighten this stuff out and if you authorize a transfer to one of their bank accounts, they will unfreeze everything. Or so they say. I’ve heard of people getting stuck in that loop for a while with the criminals, as well.”
“Hey, hey, what’s going on,” Josh exclaimed as he bounced into the office.
“I need a drink is what is going on. But I don’t have any money, so you’re paying this time,” I said as I grabbed him and made our way out of the office. “You two call me when you figure this out. Don’t let them steal all my money, please.”
“Dude, what’s happening?”
“It’s a long story, and I need to be drunk to go over it again. Let’s get some food and then head out.”
“Absolutely, man, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to pay the check,” Josh laughed.
We both knew he didn’t have billions of dollars, but considering I had absolutely zero dollars to my name, Josh was officially richer than I was that night.
I expected to feel better when we got to the club. The lights, alcohol, and music were going to drown out my sorrows – but I didn’t feel better at all. All I could think about was Delilah and how nothing seemed to be matching up. I still held out hope that she had nothing to do with what was going on, but the longer she avoided my calls and refused to talk to me, the more it was looking like she was guilty.
We drank bottle after bottle of beer as Josh tried to keep up with me. I didn’t give a crap anymore. Nothing mattered, and I was going to get so drunk that I’d have to be put in a cab and delivered to my front door.
The funny thing about my mindset was I didn’t want to find another woman to bring home. That was the strangest thing to me by far. Normally, I’d have chalked Del’s behavior up to her being a horrible person and the best way for me to get over that was to find another woman.
I just couldn’t do it, though. I couldn’t see Del as a bad person, no matter how much evidence was piling up against her. There had to be a
n explanation. I was waiting for a damn explanation.
By midnight, I was calling Del and trying to get her to answer. I called once and it went straight to voicemail, as if she had seen my call and purposely sent me away. I sent her a text and asked for just one minute of her time. That was it: I needed to hear it in her voice and that was going to be the only way I’d know if she had been involved or not.
Brandon: I’m going to call you in five minutes. Please answer; just give me one minute and you can be rid of me forever.
Delilah: I’m out with Mattie. I need to go outside or I won’t be able to hear you. Call in 10 minutes.
She’d responded! At least she responded to my message. I raced outside and to the alley so I could talk to her in private. I wanted to clearly hear her voice when I confronted her about what was going on. It had to be quiet so I could assess the situation properly.
“Hello,” she said after answering the call on the first ring.
“Hi,” I said as I lost the words for what I wanted to say to her.
There was so much going on. So much unsaid between the two of us, but with her on the phone, I didn’t want to let her go. My body longed to just have her close, and I didn’t even know if she was involved in everything that was happening. My body obviously had its own needs and didn’t care about anything else.
“I’m sorry I’ve been taking some space lately. It doesn’t mean that I never want to talk to you, though. What was up with that message?”
“Are you at Club Night?” I asked as I looked toward the front of the club and thought I saw her standing there.
“Yes, I’m standing out front.”
“Turn around,” I laughed as I walked toward her.
The smile that crossed her face wasn’t something that could have been faked. I knew people. I’d been reading them in the business world for years: that smile of Delilah’s wasn’t fake. She was genuinely happy to see me.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she laughed and gave me a hug. “I really am sorry for keeping you in the dark. That message the other day freaked me out and then there was a guy that visited my office.”
