The man was Patrick Hinton, who used to be a high school classmate of Liana.

Suddenly, I recalled some long-forgotten memories.

No wonder he looked familiar but I couldn't recognize him. I had heard the name Patrick from Liana before. She couldn't keep things to herself and eventually let it slip. Then she'd always add, "That was all in the past. Now I love you."

Back then, I thought she was adorably naive to even tell her current boyfriend something like that. Now, I just thought it was foolish.

Patrick was the most popular man in their class, and she chased him for three months before she finally got him. They were together for three years in high school. In the end, because of their majors, they separated. Patrick stayed in a local medical school while Liana went to a university out of town, where she met me.

I knew why he looked familiar. It was because Liana had shown me their high school graduation photo. It wasn't that I couldn't remember him, it was that he had aged so much that I didn't recognize him.

Due to a job transfer, Patrick had been seconded to a hospital in Washington six months ago, and the two of them rekindled their affair.

Patrick even had a housewife back home, raising two kids. It seemed that a doctor's income was high enough to support three people who didn't work.

I looked at their spending records over the past six months, including their hotel bookings. They usually spent time in cafés, upscale restaurants, and five-star hotels. They even went to seaside hotels in nearby cities.

The pain was like a knife cutting through my heart.

Because all of this was paid for with Liana's card!

I had been bearing the brunt of all the mortgage payments, just so she could have extra money to meet up with her ex.

I felt it so humiliating...

As I furiously gripped the stack of evidence of my wife's affair, searching the medicine cabinet for heart pills, my phone rang.

It was a call from Damien Conway, Liana's father. Over these past few years of marriage, whenever he called me, it was never for anything good.

He still hadn't repaid the 20 thousand dollars he borrowed from me last time. What was worse, when I married Liana, I gave them 360 thousand dollars as a wedding gift, and according to our local customs, they were supposed to return 88 thousand dollars to serve as Liana's gift. However, Damien dragged me into a small room and privately suggested not giving Liana the gift she deserved. He said Liana's younger brother, Kylan Conway, had been detained in some underground casino and couldn't get out, and they needed tens of thousands to ransom him.

Without the 88 thousand dollars, it wouldn't be enough.

I shouldered this burden alone and didn't tell Liana. 88 thousand dollars wasn't a lot, and I couldn't lose my wife over money.

I hadn't expected that after that, they seemed to have gotten a taste for it and gradually took more money from me, thinking they had found a sucker.

And why not? I was such a fool. The men of the Conway family saw me as an ATM, and Liana saw me as a landlord they could live with for free. She didn't even love me.

I answered the phone, and before I could say anything, the voice on the other end appeared, "Kolton, why did it take so long for you to pick up the phone?"

"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.