“Yes, Mr. Wyatt,” she said. “Your name is listed on an account originally established by Gregory Wyatt in 2008. However, it was closed in 2021.”
My throat tightened.
“Closed? By who?”
There was a pause on her end.
“I I’m afraid I can’t give you that information directly over the phone, but I can send the closure documents to the address we have on file. That would be…”
She read out Josh’s condo address.
I nearly crushed the phone in my hand.
“Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth. “Actually update the mailing address to my primary residence. I’ll verify it now.”
By the time the documents arrived 2 days later, I’d already started pulling every thread I could find. Phone locks, emails, my father’s old notebooks.
I even went back to the lawyer who handled the estate, requesting a full breakdown of every asset ever dispersed.
Most of it checked out, but the timeline of the anchor account, something was off.
The documents confirmed it.
Josh had posed as me. He’d forged the signature, used an ID he must have faked or borrowed, and quietly siphoned the funds over the course of two months, nearly $190,000.
Gone.
I stared at the number for what felt like hours.
Not because I needed the money. I was doing fine.
It was the principle, the weight of it.
My father had trusted me, believed in me enough to build a quiet parachute I never asked for.
And Josh had cut it loose mid-flight.
My phone buzzed again that evening. This time it was Emily.
“Please don’t do this to him. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying. This eviction is destroying him.”
I typed back, “He destroyed something first.”
No response.
For a few days, I waited.
Then I made my next move.
I didn’t yell. I didn’t call. I didn’t even warn him.
But by the end of the week, he’d wake up to a very different kind of letter. One that starts with, “Dear Mr. Wyatt,” and ends with formal charges of financial fraud.
I didn’t sleep the night before the letter hit Josh’s mailbox.