“What exactly have you heard?” I asked cautiously.
“That your parents are disinheriting you in favor of Jason. That they’ve been taking your money while funding his lifestyle. That they consider him their real son.”
She shook her head. “It’s all part of the manipulation.”
“What manipulation?”
Amanda took a deep breath. “Jason has been deliberately driving a wedge between you and your parents for years. He saw them as his meal ticket—his security net. You were the obstacle.”
She pulled out her phone and opened a folder of screenshots—text conversations between her and Jason during their relationship. She handed me the phone, and I began scrolling through messages that made my blood run cold.
“Your parents are so easy to work,” one text from Jason read. “Just tell them how much you need them, how important family is, and they eat it up. Meanwhile, Robbie’s off doing her own thing, not giving them the attention they crave. Their insecurity is my opportunity.”
Another: “Had dinner with Aunt Lisa and Uncle Tom tonight. Dropped some subtle comments about how Robbie seems too busy with her career to really care about family traditions. They ate it up. They’re so desperate to feel needed.”
And perhaps most damning: “They’re changing their will next month. Everything to me, nothing to Robbie. They don’t even see how I’ve been playing them. Too busy feeling sorry for me in my business setbacks. Little do they know those setbacks are funding my actual lifestyle.”
I looked up at Amanda, stunned.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked. “Why now?”
Her expression softened. “Because what he’s doing is wrong. I didn’t realize the full extent of it until after we broke up. He was always manipulative, but I thought it was just his personality. It wasn’t until I caught him lying about some major things that I started piecing everything together.”
“What major things?” I asked.
She hesitated. “His gambling. He has a serious problem, Robbie. Those businesses he started—they were never meant to succeed. They were covers to explain the money he was getting from your parents and to launder his occasional gambling winnings. When he loses, which is most of the time, he goes to your parents with another business idea or investment opportunity.”
It explained so much: the failed businesses, the constant need for more capital, the new house purchased at a time when he should have been broke from his business failures.
“He owes some dangerous people a lot of money,” Amanda continued. “That’s actually why we broke up. I found threatening texts on his phone. When I confronted him, he admitted he was in debt to loan sharks for over $150,000.”
I felt physically ill. My parents had no idea they were funding an addiction. They thought they were supporting entrepreneurial efforts—helping their real son build a future. Instead, they were enabling a destructive habit that could potentially put them all in danger.
“There’s more,” Amanda said quietly. “He talks about your parents’ house and assets as if they’re already his. He has plans to sell everything once he inherits—the family home, the heirlooms, all of it. He’s already spoken with realtors about the property’s potential value.”
I sat back, processing this flood of information.
“Why would my parents be so blind to this?” I asked. “They’re not stupid people.”
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