"I just found out the building was completed and delivered three years ago. It was never stalled. Not even close."
My heart seized like a fist had closed around it.
"What did you just say?"
That apartment. I'd bought it before the wedding. Three years ago, Max told me the developer had gone under and the project was dead in the water. He said he'd filed lawsuits, multiple rounds of them, but the developer refused to cooperate.
I'd wanted to dig up evidence myself, push the case further. Max had stopped me.
"Let me handle it," he'd said, his voice soft with what I thought was love. "Why should my wife have to worry about something like this?"
"I just feel bad, Madeline. All these years of long distance, and you can't even live in the home you bought for us."
The guilt in his eyes had been so convincing. I'd told myself that as long as we were in it together, no storm was too big to weather.
Now I understood. He was the storm.
I'd saved for five years before the marriage. Every penny. My parents had quietly slipped me money too, part of my nest egg for the future. All of it had gone into that apartment.