Empire of Lies

Meredith Now

My limbs burn as I slowly drag my body out of the heated pool. I’ve completed more than my required laps for the night, and I can’t take anymore. Dripping onto the tile with every step I take, I throw up my middle finger to the camera that’s tucked away in the corner, just in case he ever watches me when he’s away.

Wrapping myself in a towel, I slide my feet into my flip flops and brace myself before heading upstairs to the kitchen. He’s been gone three whole days, so I know it’s only a matter of time before he walks through the door and resets the board for a new game of chess. Before he baits me with fake news about my own case.

I look around and notice that the last chess game we played is still on display. The lights in the kitchen are still set how I like them, and there’s no new novel waiting for me on the counter. No phone charger with a “You can use this for one hour. PS—I’m still waiting on you to say thank you,” note.

Confused, I grab my watch from a drawer and see that it’s nine thirty.

He never comes home that late…

I tap my fingers against the countertop, thinking this could finally be my chance. The perfect time for me to start getting to the bottom of who the hell I really married.

I force myself to wait for another twenty minutes, and then I decide to go for it.

Making my way up the grand staircase, I make a left and head to Michael’s bedroom. The keypad on the door handle gives me pause, but I’ve seen him type in the code before, seen him switch up the numbers every now and then whenever we happened to cross paths in the hallway.

I typed in what I remember from last week, 1-17-4-16-5, and the lights flash green.

Immediately pushing the door open, I step inside and let it shut behind me.

He’s never let me see the inside of his bedroom before, and I’m shocked at how bare it is compared to the condo he showed me in New York.

There’s a king-sized bed at the center of the room, draped in white sheets and flanked by two nightstands. There are six fans hanging from the ceiling, all positioned right over the mattress—all hanging at varying heights.

Why the hell would he need more than one fan?

I walk over to the nightstands and pull every drawer open, but there’s nothing inside. Undaunted, I look under the bed—hoping to find something, but there’s nothing more.

Walking over to his closet, I type the same code into the keypad, but the lights flash red. I try it again, and an error message appears.

Too many digits… Please enter the correct six digits.

I try to think of what combination of numbers a psycho would pick—666-666, 123-456, 911-911, but none of them work. Just when I’m about to throw in the towel and leave, I enter the digits of the night we met—12-31-19, and the lights flicker yellow before turning green.

The door slowly swings open, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand at full attention.

What the hell is this?

Stumbling forward, I struggle to make sense of what I’m seeing.

In a room that’s the size of my bedroom several times over, is an immaculate and organized crime warehouse. On the right side, there’s an array of weapons locked behind a tinted wall of glass. Handguns, pistols, automatic rifles, a fucking buffet of artillery. On the left side, all of his trademark black and grey clothes are hanging at the exact same distance apart.

His collection of designer shoes—shiny black loafers and copper-colored Oxfords, are sitting still on glass risers. His te

Near the back of the room are perfectly pressed uniform tops for all types of businesses where he doesn’t work. A red and gold bellman jacket for The Four Seasons, a light brown top for the UPS delivery service, a green and black barista shirt for Starbucks. There are a few more that I don’t recognize, but none of the nametags on any of the uniform shirts sport his real name.

Austin Greenwich. Tommy Porter. Jason Dean. Who the hell are these people?

Something tells me that I should turn around and walk away at this very moment, but I can’t help but stay. I move to the far-right corner, where a beautiful white dresser stands next to a black file cabinet.

Pulling open the top dresser drawer, I hope to find some hint of who Michael is, but it’s empty.

I pull open the next one. Empty.

Then the next, and the next. All empty.

Moving on to the file cabinet, I tug on the top drawer, but it’s locked. The second one doesn’t budge a bit, but the third one slowly gives way.

Inside are a few identical leather wallets and a ton of neatly organized manila folders and envelopes.

Picking up the first wallet, I flip it open and see a Pe

The cards in the other slots aren’t credit cards. They’re other state licenses with varying names and fake addresses, but they all feature varying pictures of him in black and dark grey sweaters.

As I look a little closer at the Arizona license that’s under the name Brock Daniels, I notice that his green eyes aren’t as dark in that picture. They’re still as stu

Why doesn’t he have any tattoos in this one?

To the naked eye, this Arizona man looks exactly like Michael but not to me. The differences are subtle, but I know my husband. (Well, I thought I did.) This license is either a terribly bad photo-shop job, or this man has an identical twin brother who doesn’t share his appreciation for tattoos.

It takes me all of five minutes to realize it’s the latter.

One of the manila folders is full of pictures of the two of them. They’re faded pictures from the past—long before we’d ever met, long before he lied and said he didn’t have any family to invite to our wedding.

My heart aches as I stare at a picture of his tattooed hand giving his brother a high five on what appears to be a college campus. I make it through about twenty of their brotherly pictures and decide I’ve had enough.

He lied straight to my face…

I continue opening folder after folder, finding myself face to face with even more confusion. There are passports for damn near a hundred countries, with the colored currency to match. There are birth certificates for at least twenty different people, and just as I’m committing a few of the names to memory, a blank passport booklet falls to the floor.

This one doesn’t belong to him or his brother, though.

It belongs to me.

The photo has been edited to make my hair blonde instead of dark brown, and my name isn’t printed at all.

I tuck it into my swim shorts, making a mental note to search for “passport fraud” on my limited YouTube app.

My watch now reads midnight, and there’s plenty more manila folders and envelopes to rummage through, but I have to stop in thirty minutes. Not because I think I shouldn’t be in here in search of the truth, but because my heart can only take so much in a day.

There are several sheets of paper with handwritten notes. Random dates and times, but it’s nothing concrete.