Chapter 3 - THE STORY OF THE RETREAT
The cage was not Marcus’s entire plan.
It was the temporary part.
He and Lorraine had created a story explaining why I vanished.
According to messages they sent from my phone, I had developed severe prenatal anxiety and voluntarily entered a private residential treatment program near Cincinnati. Visitors were discouraged. Calls were restricted. My doctors were supposedly coordinating care.
The facility existed.
I had never been admitted there.
Lorraine obtained an old intake packet from a friend who once worked in behavioral health. Marcus filled it with my personal information and copied my signature from our tax returns.
He also prepared a statement claiming I suffered paranoid episodes and had begun accusing him of financial crimes.
If I escaped and reported the cage, he planned to say my condition had become worse than anyone realized.
If I died during childbirth, he would tell police I disappeared after leaving treatment against medical advice.
The child was the most important part of the plan.
My grandmother’s trust contained a provision protecting the apartment building for my descendants. If I died, my baby would inherit through a managed trust. As the surviving father, Marcus intended to seek control over the child’s property and approve the refinance through a court-supervised arrangement.
Lorraine had already contacted a family-law attorney about emergency guardianship.
She described me as unstable.
She described Marcus as devoted.
She said the baby would need protection from my relatives.
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They did not see me as a wife or mother anymore.
I was the final signature standing between them and the building.
