Shattered Dreams: When Love Becomes a Nightmare

"I didn't hear it ring earlier. What's going on?" I couldn't bring myself to be patient anymore.

"Well... So, it's about Kylan. Kolton, do you have 200 thousand dollars in cash on hand? This time, Kylan was playing some game online and got tricked again. Now he's even mortgaged our house in the hometown!" In Damien's eyes, whatever Kylan did wrong, it was someone else who led him astray or tricked him. He thought Kylan was excellent in every way. Even secretly mortgaging the house was a sign of his competence.

Wait, so the Conway family's old house was in Kylan's name? Otherwise, if the property deed and ID card didn't match, he wouldn't have been able to mortgage it.

So that meant Liana had nothing in the Conway family.

"200 thousand dollars? How could I have that much money? You knew it..."

I was shocked! I thought their little schemes amounted to borrowing one or two thousand dollars at most. I didn't expect that they'd ask for 200 thousand dollars. They were really overestimating me.

"Didn't you get a promotion and a raise last year? You said yourself you'd be getting year-end bonuses, and that'd be three or four hundred thousand dollars, right?" Damien said anxiously on the phone.

Good grief, they were even calculating all my savings. Forcing myself to stay calm, I came up with a plan. "Please calm down. The bonus was given in stock shares, so I can't come up with that much cash right away. He got scammed online, right? How about we call the police?"

This was the most reasonable advice I could offer as a brother-in-law. But just as I expected, it was hard to convince someone hell-bent on doing the wrong thing. As soon as Damien heard me mention calling the police, he flew into a rage, cursing me out over the phone for a good twenty minutes before calming down. He accused me of coming up with lousy ideas just to avoid paying.

I coaxed him, saying I'd try to figure out a way to get the money together in the next couple of days. Only then did he hang up.

I felt it wasn't worth it, all these years of enduring everything in silence. Each time I compromised, it only made them push their limits further.

So I found them a lending platform and told them I'd thoroughly checked it out. It was safe and reliable. I assured them they could borrow as much as they wanted, and I'd take care of the repayments later.

Damien was too old to understand these things, so he had his precious son, Kylan, handle it. Kylan was useless at everything except squandering money. Knowing I was backing him up, he completed the procedures fast, using both his and his father's ID cards.

After they got the money, Damien sent me a text message thanking me for my years of secret support, saying I was so helpful to them. He even urged me and Liana to start having children soon. In the end, he reminded me that the monthly loan repayment was 8 thousand dollars.

I remained calm, continuing my investigation work.