I read the document four times before I let myself believe what it said.
The first time I read it fast, the way you read something when your eyes are moving quicker than your brain is willing to follow. The words landed but did not settle. I folded it back up and sat against the wall and told myself I had misread the name. That it was similar to his name but not his name. That my mind was doing what minds do under prolonged stress, finding familiar shapes in random information, building meaning out of nothing because meaning feels safer than chaos.
The second time I read it slowly.
It still said Marcus Holt.
The third time, I was looking for anything that could give me an alternative explanation. A different Marcus. A forged signature on the payment document itself, the whole thing a l
