My Fake Husband Stole My Rent Chapter 1

It was the day I went to collect rent that the bottom fell out of my reality.

I discovered a truth so deeply unsettling it made my blood run cold. My personal trainer—the guy who counted my reps and wiped down my bench—had been impersonating my husband. He had somehow managed to con every single tenant in my building out of their next three years of rent.

Looking back, the warning signs were flashing neon from the very beginning.

The shift happened the moment he found out I owned real estate and lived entirely off passive income. The way he looked at me changed. It wasn’t customer service anymore; it was calculation. I had assumed he was just aggressively pushing for a membership renewal. I even asked him point-blank if my prepaid sessions were running out.

Instead of answering, he reached out, gave my hip a patronizing pat, and told me, in a tone dripping with unearned authority, that I was strictly forbidden from drinking imported protein shakes anymore.

He told me that women with "too much muscle" were unappealing. He said I needed to eat more red meat, drink heavy stews, and get my body fat percentage up. That’s how you prepare a body for carrying a child, he had said, his eyes dark and entirely too familiar. That’s what a real woman is supposed to do.

My skin crawled. I took two sharp steps back, my guard instantly up, and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing.

He didn't apologize. He looked annoyed. He gave me a lecture about how a woman of my age was running out of time, how geriatric pregnancies resulted in cognitive delays. Then, the absolute audacity—he pulled a thermos out of his gym bag. It was filled with some dark, foul-smelling herbal brew his mother had allegedly simmered for hours. Drink this, he insisted. It guarantees a healthy baby boy.

He didn't stop there. He casually mentioned that once I was pregnant, he would take over the burden of collecting my rents. I could just stay home and focus on baking the baby. Oh, and when his younger sister got married, he was going to gift her one of my apartments. He couldn't have his little sister looking like a charity case in front of her new in-laws, after all.

I stared at him, completely bewildered, and told him to get his grotesque swamp-water away from me.

He snapped. He called me an ungrateful bitch. He said I was an aging, pretentious woman who pranced around in front of men, and that I should be on my knees thanking God a guy like him was willing to overlook my baggage.

I felt physically nauseous. I marched straight to the front desk and canceled my membership on the spot.

He harassed my phone for a few days, a barrage of manic texts, and then... silence. He vanished.

I never expected that the next time his name surfaced, it would be tied to a grift of this magnitude.

* * *

"Look, Julia, your husband already came by last month and collected three years of rent for the whole building. He even gave us a twenty percent discount for paying upfront. Why are you here asking for it again?"

I stared at the bank transfer receipt Gary, the tenant from 2B, shoved into my face. My brain short-circuited.

"My husband?" The words tasted foreign on my tongue. "I don't even have a boyfriend, Gary. What husband?"

Gary’s expression darkened into a scowl. "Come on, don't play games. Bradley showed me the photos from your courthouse wedding."

He crossed his arms. "He told us you were doing IVF, that your hormones were making you emotionally unstable, and he didn't want you stressing over the properties. That's why he handled it."

Bradley. The same Bradley I had fired and blocked days ago. The man who had screamed that I was a stuck-up bitch for rejecting his psychotic advances.

My hands curled into tight fists. My nails bit into my palms. "Call the police. Call 911 right now, Gary. This is massive fraud."

"Honey, haven't you made enough of a scene?" a male voice sighed from behind me.

I whipped around. Bradley was walking up the front steps, carrying two cheap bottles of drugstore prenatal vitamins.

He looked at me with exaggerated exhaustion. "Look, I know you're still mad I wouldn't buy you that designer bag, but we're going to be parents soon. We have to learn how to budget."

He turned to the gathering crowd of tenants. "I put that three years of rent into a high-yield CD. It's locked away for our son's college fund."

My finger shook as I pointed it at his chest. "Are you out of your psychotic mind?! Who is your wife? Who is having your son?!"

Bradley gave a condescending chuckle and reached out, trying to patronizingly pat my head. "Julia, babe, it's one thing to throw these little tantrums at home, but do you really have to do this out in public?"

He looked around, playing the weary martyr. "I know this building is in your name, sweetheart. But we're married. It's marital property now." He spread his hands. "What's the crime in me helping you collect the rent? Do you really need to humiliate me in front of all these nice people?"

The tenants exchanged glances. The whispers started.

Gary shook his head at me. "Julia, this isn't right. Whatever fights you two are having at home, you don't drag us into it."

"Yeah," a woman from the third floor chimed in. "Bradley is just trying to secure your family's future. Why are you being so completely unreasonable?"

I felt the blood rushing to my ears. "I am not wasting my breath on this. I'm having the cops sort this out right now."

Bradley suddenly lunged forward and gripped my wrist. Hard. "Julia, don't push me," he hissed, his voice dropping the friendly-guy act.

"I handled the rent for your own good. You really want to blow this up?" His grip tightened until my bones ground together. "You want me to air out all your dirty little secrets right here?"

I violently yanked my arm free. "Do it! I'd love to see what twisted fantasy you pull out of your ass next!"

Bradley reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a thick stack of glossy photographs, and threw them onto the concrete.

"Look at these!" he yelled to the crowd. "Look at how she acts when she claims she's single!"

The photos scattered across the pavement. I looked down, and all the warmth drained from my body. Ice filled my veins.

They were pictures of me at the gym. Bending over the rowing machine. Squatting. But worse—there were photos taken through the crack of the women's locker room door as I was changing my shoes.

My face burned with a mix of utter violation and raw fury. "You disgusting creep! You were stalking me!"

Bradley puffed out his chest. "Stalking? I'm a husband documenting my beautiful wife! You go to the gym dressed like a stripper just to get male attention! If I wasn't generous enough to put up with you, who else would want damaged goods like you?"

The tenants were actively pointing now.

"Wow. You think you know people. Dressed so nice, but totally trashy behind closed doors."

"Poor guy. Must be hell being married to a woman who can't keep it in her pants."

I raised my hand to slap the absolute taste out of his mouth, but before I could, an older woman pushed through the crowd, threw herself onto the concrete, and started slapping her own thighs, wailing at the top of her lungs.

"Everyone, look! Look at her! The daughter-in-law is beating her husband! She's beating her mother-in-law!"

It was an Oscar-worthy performance of pure, unadulterated madness. "What did our family do to deserve this curse? She took fifty thousand dollars from us for the wedding fund, and now she's throwing us away like garbage!"

I ground my teeth together so hard my jaw ached. "You are all certifiably insane! I don't even know who you are!"

The older woman—Bradley’s mother—scrambled to her feet and pointed a jagged finger at my stomach. "Don't know us? You're carrying my grandson in your belly, and you dare say you don't know us?!"

She stepped into my space, her breath hot and sour. "Listen to me, Julia. We collected that rent, and we're keeping it! You call the cops, and I will show up at your corporate office. I will show up at your parents' house in the suburbs. I will ruin you so thoroughly you'll never show your face in this town again!"

I didn't blink. I pulled out my phone and dialed. "Yes, 911? I need officers at my location immediately. I'm looking at a coordinated fraud scheme exceeding three hundred thousand dollars."

Seeing me actually make the call, Bradley just smirked, entirely unfazed. "Go ahead. Cops hate domestic disputes. Let's see how you talk your way out of this one, babe."