My fiancé canceled our wedding via text message. I replied, “My condolences.” Then I forwarded his message to his parents, who had paid for everything. An hour later, his father called me in a panic to say the money had disappeared…

Bridget let out a soft gasp while ten minutes later Melinda called me, but I refused to answer the phone.

Then another message came through from her asking if this was true, but I remained silent until Bradley himself wrote to me fifteen minutes later.

He didn’t ask how I was or offer a real apology, but only wrote: “Why did you send that message to my parents?”

That question froze me to the bone because there was not a single word about the disaster or my feelings, only his own selfish anger.

Then Mr. Howard called me directly for the first time in three years, and I finally answered on the fourth attempt.

“Cassandra,” he said in a voice I didn’t recognize, “do you happen to know where Bradley is right now?”

I frowned and asked if he wasn’t with them, but there was a heavy silence on the other end as if he were trying to sort out a tragedy.

“He left his apartment and isn’t answering anyone, and there is something vital you need to know,” Howard explained with a shaky breath.

“My son didn’t just cancel the wedding, he emptied the entire joint account,” he revealed, making me feel like the floor was moving beneath my feet.

“Are you saying that Bradley stole all the money?” I asked as the boutique walls felt like they were closing in on me.

“I am saying that I think my son did something catastrophic and this is just the beginning,” Howard answered, chilling me to the bone.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to discover that canceling the wedding via text was the least monstrous thing Bradley had ever done.

I arrived at the Sterling residence an hour later with smeared makeup and a dry throat, feeling like I was entering a crime scene instead of a family home.

The house usually smelled of expensive furniture but that night it smelled of pure fear while Melinda sat on the sofa with a contorted face.

Howard paced the floor with printed bank statements and a laptop open on the coffee table next to a torn note found in Bradley’s apartment.

“I’m sorry, it’s the only way to fix it,” the note read, but it offered no real explanation for the void I felt in my stomach.

Until that moment, I thought this was just simple cowardice or a last minute crisis, but the bank records showed a pattern of a much deeper disease.

There were transactions to online casinos and gambling apps that had been repeating for over a year alongside exorbitant interest rates from payday loans.