[Hazel]
I sat stiffly in the front passenger seat of Elijah’s car, my hands clutched tightly in my lap, fingers pressing into the fabric of my tailored pants like it could somehow anchor me to the present. The world outside the window moved in a blur, but inside my head, everything was still, frozen in time as I replayed the phone call with James over and over again.
“Hazel, I have some bad news for you. But thanks to your bank error, at least it's only half bad in your case. Those bastards—they're the wanted scammers. The seller and the agent—they’re both in on it. The whole deal was a scam. I was double-checking the property papers when I found it. The document format. It felt somewhat familiar, so I checked, and sure enough, it matched the document format of one of my clients who was
