Chapter 8 - Claire Was Never My Rival
Claire and I had been friends for thirty-one years.
College roommates.
Bridesmaids.
Godmothers to each other’s children.
The idea that she had run away with Thomas hurt because it was believable enough to break me.
That had been deliberate.
The message was designed for me.
Police traced the synchronized device used to send it.
Thomas’s old iPad.
The device had connected to resort Wi-Fi from room 1416.
Daniel Mercer’s room.
Daniel had access to Thomas’s cloud credentials.
He sent the message.
Why include Claire?
Because Daniel knew I would react emotionally.
He expected me to freeze accounts.
That sounded counterproductive until investigators explained the second step.
When I canceled the supplementary cards, several automatic fraud protections triggered.
One investment account temporarily switched to backup authentication.
That backup route used Thomas’s compromised email.
Daniel attempted the $38,500 wire during that window.
He had expected more.
My bank’s fraud system stopped the transfer because the destination account was already flagged.
The cruel message was not only meant to hurt me.
It was meant to make me take a predictable financial action.
Daniel had weaponized my marriage against my own accounts.
But he had miscalculated one thing.
May you like
I canceled faster than expected.
And I changed more than the cards.
