It was about someone trying desperately to prove her worth.
“You never thought about asking me for advice?” I asked quietly.
She lowered her head.
“I always felt like your family thought I was useless,” she said. “I wanted to prove I could do something big.”
That sentence hurt more than the debt itself.
I remembered the small comments my mother sometimes made at family dinners. The way my sister once suggested Isabella should find “a more serious career.” I had always assumed those things didn’t affect her much.
Maybe I just didn’t want to notice.
That night we didn’t solve anything. We simply talked until exhaustion took over. We slept in the same bed, but the distance between us felt enormous.
The next morning I took a day off from work.
We reviewed every document together. There were multiple loans—some from banks, others from private lenders. The interest rates were brutal. The total debt was growing fast.
I called a friend who worked at a law firm. After hearing the situation, he told me something important: since there hadn’t been any legal action yet, there was still time to negotiate.
That word—negotiate—became our only hope.