He explained, casually, that his mother, Carmen, was having financial trouble, and his sister, Paula, had just separated and needed “support.”
That “support,” of course, meant I would cook, clean, rearrange my schedule, and give up traveling for work.
He had already decided.
Without asking me.
I didn’t argue.
That was the part that unsettled him the most.
I simply nodded, cleared the plates, and asked what time he planned to pick them up the next day.
He smiled like a man who thought he had just won.
At dawn, he left to drive to pick them up.
The moment the door closed behind him, I called Laura Mitchell, my attorney.
Then I called the landlord of the apartment we lived in—a spacious place I had been paying for almost entirely for the past two years.
After that, I contacted the same express moving company my firm used for corporate relocations.
By mid-afternoon, the apartment looked nothing like the one Alexander had left.
His belongings were sorted, cataloged, and packed.
The locks had been changed—with full legal authorization from the landlord.
On the entry console, I left a blue folder containing copies of the lease, bank statements, transfer records, and a short note: