For 18 Years I Took Sleeping Pills… Until I Discovered What My Husband Was Doing At Night… SHOCK!

Pieces of the Puzzle

My legs felt like jelly as I backed away from the door. This wasn’t my husband talking.

This couldn’t be the man who brought me flowers every Friday, who slow-danced with me in the kitchen while dinner cooked, who held my hand during scary movies. But as I crept back upstairs, my mind racing faster than my heart, pieces of a puzzle I didn’t even know existed started falling into place.

The monthly business trips Brad took to Boston, always lasting exactly three days, always returning with expensive gifts and elaborate explanations about boring conferences. The way he insisted on handling all our finances because numbers stressed me out.

How he’d encouraged me to quit my job at the marketing firm five years ago, saying he earned enough for both of us. Even the way my mother-in-law Janet always asks strange questions about our savings.

Questions that seemed too specific to be casual curiosity. God, had she known all along?

I made it back to bed and forced myself to lie still, to breathe evenly, to play the part of the sedated wife. But inside I was screaming.

Who was Victoria, what was phase three, and most importantly, what else had been happening during all those nights I’d been unconscious?

The Trial of the Midnight Detective

As Brad’s footsteps eventually climbed the stairs, I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed my racing heart wouldn’t give me away. He slipped into bed beside me and I felt him lean over, checking that I was deeply asleep.

His satisfied sigh made my skin crawl. The next morning, I deserved an Oscar for my performance.

I woke up groggy, as always, accepting Brad’s kiss on the forehead and his cheerful morning greeting.

“Sleeping beauty,” he said without me flinching.

He made breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast, my favorite, while chatting about his day ahead. Board meetings, client lunches, the usual.

I nodded and smiled, all while my mind replayed the previous night like a horror movie on loop. That evening, I made a decision that terrified me.

When Brad handed me my sleeping pill with my chamomile tea, I perfected a magician’s sleight of hand I didn’t know I possessed. The pill went under my tongue instead of down my throat.

And later, when he wasn’t looking, I spit it into a tissue. This became my nightly ritual.

Pretend to take the pill, fake the drowsiness, stumble to bed, playing the part of the heavily medicated wife. What I discovered over the next few weeks would have been fascinating if it wasn’t so deeply disturbing.

Brad had a routine, precise as a Swiss watch. He would wait exactly 45 minutes after my supposed pill taking before even moving.

He’d test me first, calling my name softly then louder, sometimes even shaking my shoulder. I learned to stay limp, to keep my breathing deep and even, though every fiber of my being wanted to confront him right then and there.

A Legacy of Forgery

But I needed evidence, real solid proof of whatever twisted game he was playing. So I became a detective in my own home, though admittedly not a very good one at first.

There was the night I tried to follow him downstairs and knocked over the hallway vase. Thank God for my quick thinking and mumbling about needing the bathroom.

Or the time I attempted to use my phone to record him and accidentally turned on the flashlight instead. I swear Nancy Drew never had these problems.

The receipts I found hidden in his jacket pockets told a story of their own. Hotels in Boston, yes, but also charges for two at restaurants, jewelry stores with purchases that never made their way to me.

There was a second phone, too, discovered when I accidentally knocked his gym bag over. A cheap burner phone, the kind you see in crime shows.

When I powered it on while he showered, I found dozens of messages from V. Victoria, I presumed.

They spoke in code mostly, but certain phrases stood out: “the wife,” “the timeline,” “final transfer,” and most chillingly, “just like the others.” Others, plural.

The word echoed in my mind as I quickly photographed the messages before replacing the phone. What others?

Who else had Brad done this to, or was he running this scam on multiple women simultaneously? The thought made me physically ill and I had to rush to the bathroom, playing it off as something I ate when Brad showed concern.

His gentle pat on my back as I heaved felt like spiders crawling on my skin.

The Mother-in-Law’s Visit

The parallel dramas in my life weren’t helping my stress levels either. Janet, my mother-in-law, had suddenly developed an intense interest in our financial planning.

She’d call during the day when Brad was at work, asking about our retirement funds, our investment portfolios, whether we had proper life insurance.

“A mother worries,” she’d say with this syrupy sweet voice that never reached her eyes.

Once she even suggested I should give Brad full power of attorney just in case something happens. The way she said it made me wonder if she was threatening or warning me.

The puzzle pieces finally formed a complete picture on a rainy Thursday night, exactly one month after my first unexpected awakening. Brad was on another business trip, giving me the freedom to truly investigate without fear of discovery.

Armed with the passwords I’d watched him type—thank God for his habit of pecking at keys with two fingers—I accessed our home computer and dove deep into our financial records. What I found made my discovery of the secret bank accounts look like child’s play.

Brad had been slowly, methodically draining my inheritance account, the one my grandmother had left me, the one that was supposed to be untouchable until I turned 40. Except somehow, he’d been making withdrawals, small enough to go unnoticed individually but adding up to nearly half a million dollars over the years.

The signatures on the withdrawal forms were mine, but I knew with bone-deep certainty that I’d never signed them. Those nights when I was unconscious, he hadn’t just been managing secret accounts.

He’d been using my sedated state to forge my signature on document after document. The scope of his deception was breathtaking.

He’d taken out credit cards in my name, loans I never knew existed, even a second mortgage on a property I apparently owned in Vermont. Vermont?

I’d never even been to Vermont. Each transaction happened during my pill-induced unconsciousness, each signature forged while I lay there like a breathing corpse in our marital bed.

The man I’d shared my life with had turned me into his personal ATM. And I’d been too drugged to notice.