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My Boyfriend Cosigned My Loan, and After It Cleared I Ran
NovelShort
new
Completed
After my family's company went bankrupt, my boyfriend's older brother came to me. "Help me out with a loan. The money just passes through your account. I'll use it for a few days and pay it back." I told him I had no assets and no credit. My boyfriend's older brother said it didn't matter. "I'll have my brother put his house up as collateral. His credit is solid." I smiled and agreed.
Chapters (4)
第1章
After my family's company went bankrupt, my boyfriend's older brother came to me.
"Help me push through a loan. The money just passes through your account. I use it for a few days, then I pay it back."
I told him I had no assets and no credit.
He said that didn't matter.
"My brother will put his house up as collateral. His credit is fine."
I smiled and agreed.
Three days later, five hundred thousand landed in my account.
Then he called.
"I'm giving you an account number. Transfer the money over."
I shot back at once.
"I took out the loan. Why should I hand it to you?"
He got a little angry.
"We talked about this. It's just a formality, you're doing me a favor."
"This really isn't the time to joke around. I need that money for something big."
I hung up on him. The next day, the police showed up at my door.
"Someone filed a report. You're suspected of fraud."
1
Two officers, serious but polite.
"Sophia Henson, someone filed a report saying you're suspected of fraud."
I looked past the two of them to my boyfriend's brother, Mervyn Whitney, standing behind them, and asked with a smile.
"If I'm not mistaken, it was Mervyn who called you, wasn't it?"
It came out less like a question than a statement, and Mervyn jumped in right away.
"Yeah, I called them. What are you going to do about it?"
"We agreed. The loan comes through, the money's for me to use. Why won't you transfer it?"
He was worked up, and one of the officers stepped forward to calm him.
"Settle down for now. Let us get the facts straight first."
"Officer, I don't see what there is to sort out. Just arrest her!"
The other officer came over to me and spoke quietly.
"Do you want to answer questions here, or come back to the station with us?"
I thought for a moment, then answered evenly.
"It's simple, and the whole process is out in the open."
I started laying it out, and both officers moved in front of me, taking notes.
"Mervyn is the older brother of my boyfriend, Abraham Whitney. He works at a bank."
"A week ago he called me, said he was short on a target at work and needed me to help take out a loan."
"I agreed at the time, but I also said my family's company had gone bankrupt, so I had no assets and no credit."
Mervyn rolled his eyes and cut in.
"So you do know you've got nothing. Why would I come to you for a loan otherwise?"
The officer taking notes gave him a hard look.
"No one is asking you. Please stay quiet."
Mervyn hunched down and shut up. I calmly went on.
"Mervyn said my boyfriend, his younger brother Abraham, would guarantee the loan for me."
I hadn't even called Abraham back then. He was the one who called me.
"Did my brother ask you to help take out a loan, to hit some target?"
I'd asked him, curious.
"Look at my situation right now. Do you really think a loan would go through?"
Abraham swore up and down.
"With me guaranteeing it, there's no problem at all. Just listen to my brother and follow the process."
Two days later, Abraham and I went to the bank together to sign and do the interview.
The bank manager asked me a lot of questions, and I answered all of them honestly.
At the end, when it came to the guarantee, the manager turned to Abraham and asked him solemnly.
"Under the terms of the contract, if your girlfriend can't repay on time, you become the co-borrower responsible for repayment. Do you understand that?"
Abraham nodded without hesitation.
"I understand. No problem."
Once everything was done, the manager told us to go home and wait to hear back.
In the parking lot outside the bank, just as I was about to get in the car, Abraham suddenly grabbed my arm.
"When this loan comes through, you transfer it to my brother as fast as you can."
I asked him, curious.
"What is this money actually for?"
Abraham explained to me very patiently.
"My brother's found a really good project. Put in five hundred thousand, and it doubles in three months."
"If it earns a little more, I'll think about pulling some out to help pay down your family's debt."
After I heard that, I let it go and moved on to another subject.
"The wedding in three months, is it still going ahead as planned?"
第2章
Right up until the officers arrived, Abraham never gave me an answer.
That was answer enough.
Once all the statements were down, the officer turned to me one last time.
"Anything else you want to add?"
I shook my head.
"Nothing more about the loan."
But about why my family went bankrupt, I had a great many questions for the Whitney brothers.
"Officer, how can you say this isn't fraud?"
Mervyn couldn't help pressing again.
"If I didn't need the money, why would I have had her take out the loan, and why would I have made my own brother cosign?"
The officer heard that and laughed in disbelief.
"As a bank loan officer, do you understand that what you just said is itself illegal?"
"And I already asked and got a clear answer. Miss Henson never entered into any agreement with you."
"You admit that, don't you?"
Mervyn panicked, flushed red to the ears as he tried to explain.
"That's impossible. The two of us agreed to it, out loud."
"Do you have a recording?"
Mervyn went quiet.
The other officer, an older man, gave him a heavy, serious warning.
"The way you're thinking right now is dangerous. Do not do anything illegal."
"If you get other solid evidence proving Sophia Henson defrauded you, you can call us again."
"Any other questions right now?"
Mervyn shot me a resentful look, then shook his head weakly at the two officers.
"No."
After the officers left, Mervyn stayed planted on my sofa, refusing to go.
"My brother's on his way. You'd better figure out what you're going to tell him."
With that he ignored me completely, helping himself to beer and snacks from the fridge as if the place were his own.
The living room turned foul and smoky, and I looked right through all of it.
Abraham arrived fast. The moment he was through the door he jabbed a finger at me, furious.
"Sophia, what's the meaning of this?"
"My brother made it perfectly clear when he came to you. That money is for us to use. It has nothing to do with you."
I took out my phone and set it on the coffee table.
"Do you still remember my payment password? It's my birthday."
Abraham froze for a beat, then pressed on, his expression stiff.
"Don't change the subject. I'm talking about this loan right now."
"Transfer the five hundred thousand to my brother's account, right now, this instant, or I'm not done with you."
Abraham had been my classmate in college. From freshman year he chased me hard.
Junior year I agreed to see how things went, and the moment I did he announced it to everyone.
"Sophia Henson is my girl. I'll keep her happy for the rest of her life."
After that he never did anything out of line. He only grew gentler with me.
Until my internship, when he came to my family's company.
Abraham asked me for something for the first time.
"My brother's a top graduate in finance. Could you help get him into the investment department?"
Given how he'd behaved before, I didn't doubt him. I quietly had a word with HR.
Three months later, my father called me into his office. His face was grim as he asked me.
"Abraham is your boyfriend, and you're the one who slipped Mervyn into the company too, aren't you?"
The absurd thing was, at the time I thought my father meant the dating I'd kept from him.
"Abraham's a good person. What's wrong with his brother at the company?"
第3章
"Sophia, did you not hear me?"
When I stayed silent for too long, Abraham lost his patience.
"Don't forget, I'm the one who bought you this house. Without it you'd be out on the street."
"So?"
I couldn't hold the anger down anymore.
"Am I supposed to thank you, Abraham? Thank you for taking me in out of the kindness of your heart, for handing me a house?"
"Before you say any of that, think back. How did you get into the company? How did you drive my family's company into bankruptcy?"
"And that good older brother of yours. You still can't see him for what he really is?"
Abraham stared at me, confusion in his eyes, and underneath it more shock than anything.
"What are you even talking about? What does your family's company going under have to do with me?"
"And why are you bringing up my brother?"
"Abraham, stop talking to her."
Mervyn was the clearer-headed one. He could see I wasn't going to back down today.
"Sophia, did you forget? I'm the one who works at the bank. I can call in this loan whenever I want."
I laughed coldly to myself, hating my own ignorance back then.
A useless nobody like Mervyn, and someone still arranged him a spot in the finance department.
"You do work at the bank, yes, in loans. But do you actually have that authority?"
I looked at him, almost amused, and kindly walked him through a few basic facts.
"Once a loan is issued, it goes to a whole separate loan management department. You think you can just get yourself transferred over?"
"Mervyn, did you forget how you even got into that bank?"
Without his time on the payroll at my family's company, forget the bank, he couldn't have landed a single respectable job.
"You're welcome, by the way."
This time it was Mervyn who snapped, like I'd stepped on a nerve.
"All I did was ask you to put in a word, and you make it sound like I owe you some enormous debt. What, should I kneel down and kowtow to thank you too?"
"Sure. I'll wait."
I poured myself a glass of water, took a sip, and set it down slowly.
"I just wonder if you've got the nerve to face the truth."
"I'll kill you, you little—"
Mervyn spat the curse out.
Abraham grabbed him fast, pleading the whole time.
"Mervyn, don't. Whatever you do, don't hit her. The second you touch her, this becomes something else entirely!"
Even now, it never once crossed Abraham's mind to think of me.
But that was fine. I'd already woken up.
However lost you get in love, living through your family's ruin and your parents' deaths forces you to grow.
The two of them reached the door, and Abraham turned back to look at me.
"A woman as venomous as you, I don't have the luck for it. I'm not worthy of you."
"Sophia, from today on, you and I are done."
I clapped as I watched the two of them go, even as the tears slipped down my face.
Back in the bedroom, I lit incense and knelt before my parents' memorial.
When I lifted my head again, I looked at their faces, their smiles, and murmured to myself.
"Mom, Dad. This five hundred thousand is only the beginning."
第4章
I knew the loan wasn't going to end here.
But I had plenty of scores of my own to settle with the two brothers.
The next morning, the bank's customer service line called back.
"Miss Henson, what exactly is this loan for?"
I looked around at the familiar layout of the apartment, and something clicked.
"We're planning to redo the place."
"Understood. I'll note that on your file. Just a reminder, this loan cannot be used for investments, stock trading, or wealth management products."
Around noon, Abraham showed up alone, carrying a takeout bag of the lobster rolls from Marino's I always loved.
"Sophia, it's time you and I had a real talk."
I stood in the doorway and didn't let him in.
"There's nothing to talk about. Didn't you say yesterday that we were through?"
"Sophia, you know the position I'm in."
His face was all bitterness, and he explained to me like he actually meant it.
"My brother was here yesterday. I had no choice but to say that."
"My whole life, my brother's been the one my parents doted on. The moment anything doesn't go his way, I'm the first one they yell at."
I'd heard all of this many times before.
I'd even met his parents.
The two of them seemed so warm and kind, but the words out of their mouths were exactly as sharp and mean as Abraham described.
"If I can't get that five hundred thousand back, I can't go home, and they might even take it all the way to the company."
"Can't you take pity on me and just transfer the five hundred thousand to my brother?"
I shook my head firmly and asked him in a cold voice.
"There's one thing I've wondered about this whole time."
"Abraham, you're you, and your brother is your brother. Why do you trust him so completely?"
As far as I knew, the house his family lived in had been bought outright by Abraham.
As my guarantor, if I couldn't repay the money when the time came, the bank could seize that house.
"You don't even know if your brother's project is real. If he loses the money, aren't you throwing away a whole house?"
"He's my brother. How could he hurt me?"
Hearing that, I knew he was beyond saving.
I shoved him hard out the door and slammed it shut behind him.
Abraham pounded on it from the other side.
"Sophia, open this door!"
I slid slowly down the door until I was sitting on the floor.
"There's another thing I came about today. You said the company went bankrupt because of us. What did you mean by that?"
He actually had the nerve to bring that up.
Back then, my father had told me everything, clearly, in his office.
"The company's bankrupt. We're in the red, and your mother and I have nowhere left to turn."
"And the reason for all of it is that fine older brother of your boyfriend's."
"A slip-up he carefully arranged leaked all of our trading data, and our rivals found the fatal gap they needed."
My father wasn't angry with me then. His voice was strangely calm.
At the time I thought the whole thing could pass, but only later did I understand that inside he'd already given up.
In the last words he ever said to me:
"It took me twenty years to get where I am, and it took you a few months to let the wolf in."
"Sophia, from now on, look closely at the people around you, and learn to be strong."
After a long silence, Abraham spoke through the door.
"If you're talking about the operational slip-up, my brother didn't do it."
"I know I've got no proof saying this, but think about it. My brother doesn't understand the first thing about finance!"
"If my brother and I really wanted to ruin you, why would we have bought you this apartment?"
I sat on the floor until it went dark, waiting until Abraham's voice finally faded from the other side of the door.
When the streetlights came on, I made a call.
"Can you meet me at the food stalls? It's nothing serious."
Once the other person agreed, I put on a little makeup and went out.