I later learned that “abusive” meant he had cut off her credit card.
“I have nowhere to go. Mom said you would help me.”
Carol called me ten minutes later.
“Simone, you have that big house with all those empty guest rooms. Let your sister stay for a few weeks. She just needs to recover. Family helps family.”
I agreed.
I always agreed.
One week turned into six months.
Brin spent her days by my pool drinking my wine and criticizing my landscapers. Marcus, at the time, seemed annoyed by her presence.
“She’s a leech, Simone. She treats our house like a hotel.”
I defended her.
“She’s grieving, Marcus. Give her time.”
Then came the request.
“I need a job,” Brin announced one night at dinner. “I’m bored. I want to work for you guys.”
I nearly choked.
“Brin, we run a commercial real estate firm. It’s high pressure. What skills do you have for this?”
“I’m good with people,” she insisted. “I can be, I don’t know, client relations. I can organize the parties. I can talk to investors. You two are so serious. You need someone fun.”
“No,” I said.
It was one of the few times I put my foot down.
But Carol intervened.
She drove forty minutes to have coffee with me.
“Simone, this is Brin’s chance to be responsible. If you don’t give her a job, she’ll flounder. Do you want her living on your sofa forever? Give her a salary. Let her move out. Marcus thinks it’s a good idea too.”
I blinked.
“Marcus?”
“I talked to him,” Carol said smoothly. “He thinks Brin could help soften the company image. You know, you can be a little intense, honey.”
I confronted Marcus.
“You want to hire Brin?”
Marcus shrugged, adjusting his tie.
“Your mother’s right. We need someone to handle the social side—the galas, the charity events. You hate that stuff. Let her do it. Pay her an assistant salary. Get her out of the house. We all win.”
So I did.
I created a position: Director of Special Events.
At first, it seemed to work. Brin moved into an apartment I subsidized and organized the company Christmas party. It was lavish, over budget, but technically a success.
Then the subtle shifts began.
Brin started coming into the office every day dressed not in business attire but in tight dresses that hovered just this side of inappropriate. She spent hours in Marcus’s office supposedly discussing event logistics. I would walk past and hear them laughing. Whenever I entered the room, they would stop.
“What’s so funny?” I would ask, already feeling the first prickling of unease.
“Just a joke about a client,” Brin would say with that saccharine smile. “You wouldn’t get it, Simone. It’s an inside joke.”
She started joining us at business lunches.
Then she started replacing me at them.
“Simone, you stay back and finish the quarterly projections,” Marcus would say. “Brin and I will take the developers to the steakhouse. You know you hate small talk.”
And I did hate small talk.
I loved the work.
So I let them go.
I stayed at the office eating salad at my desk, running the numbers, making sure our profit margins were healthy while my husband and my sister drank martinis and laughed at my expense.
I noticed changes in Marcus. He started dressing younger. He bought a Porsche he didn’t need. He started staying out late for “networking.” Whenever I voiced concern, Carol gaslit me into silence.
“You’re being paranoid, Simone,” she scolded. “You should be glad Marcus and Brin get along. Most men hate their in-laws. It’s a blessing. Don’t ruin it with your jealousy. It’s beneath you.”
Jealousy.
She made me feel like a crazy, insecure harpy.
Now, staring at the Project B folder on my laptop, I saw the reality. The networking dinners were dates. The business trips to Miami were vacations. The “consulting fees” paid to Brin were really an allowance for being his mistress.
The snake had not just slithered into the grass.
I had opened the door, invited her in, and given her warm milk.
And the worst part was this:
My mother had held the door open.
Carol had brokered it.
She had pushed Brin toward Marcus, knowing exactly what Brin was capable of. She wanted Brin to have the life I built, because in her twisted mind Brin deserved the kingdom and I was merely the builder, destined to raise it and walk away.
I slammed my hand against the cheap motel desk. The pain anchored me.
“Okay,” I whispered into the empty room. “You want to play the fun, irresponsible game? Let’s see how much fun it is when the architect pulls the load-bearing wall.”
I spent the next six hours in a trance of forensic accounting. The ghost access gave me everything, but I had to be careful. If I changed anything—if I altered even one file—the system logs could alert the IT director, a man named Steven who had once been loyal to me but now undoubtedly answered to Marcus.
So I became a ghost.
I copied.
I downloaded.
I took screenshots.
