Empire of Lies - Whitney G. Page 0,45

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 tennis shoes are all laced for an instant run, perfectly aligned with each other.

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 Pennsylvania state license is for someone named Tyler Spears. The man in the picture is definitely Michael, though.

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 stunning as ever, but they have a different tint to them. Not only that, but his lips aren’t as full, and the shirt he’s wearing for the camera exposes most of his neck.

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