Chapter 7 - The Uninvited Guest
Ethan sat on the edge of the mattress, his head buried in his hands, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
"You ruined me," he muttered, rocking slightly back and forth. "You ruined everything. Do you have any idea what you've done? That fifty-thousand-dollar deposit on the condo came from a private loan I took out against my consulting firm's future receivables. If the contract falls through, I'm personally liable. I'll be bankrupt by Monday."
"You were willing to leave me bankrupt by Monday," I said, looking down at him without an ounce of pity. "You were willing to leave me with a hundred thousand dollars of fraudulent debt on the home my grandfather built. Did you think about that when you were booking your flights to Miami?"
"I was going to pay it back!" he shouted, suddenly lifting his head, tears of self-pity streaming down his flushed cheeks. "Once the Florida investments matured, I was going to send you the money! I wasn't going to leave you with nothing!"
"Stop lying, Ethan. It's exhausting."
I unzipped my leather briefcase and pulled out the legal packet Marcus had prepared. I dropped it onto the coffee table with a sharp, echoing thud.
"What is that?" he asked hoarsely.
"That is a voluntary settlement agreement," I stated. "And a confession of judgment."
He looked at the thick stack of papers as if it were a coiled rattlesnake. "A confession of judgment?"
"You have two options, Ethan. Option one: you sign the quitclaim deed transferring your entire share of this house to me immediately. You assign your interest in the consulting firm over to an independent trustee until the hundred-thousand-dollar fraudulent equity loan is fully repaid. You sign a waiver relinquishing any claim to my retirement accounts, my savings, or my bonus. And you cooperate fully with the county prosecutor regarding Victoria Hayes’s role in the mortgage forgery."
Ethan’s jaw trembled. "And what's option two?"
"Option two is that Marcus Vance walks down to the district attorney's office at ten o'clock sharp. You will be arrested for felony forgery, grand larceny, and identity theft before lunchtime. You will spend the weekend in the county jail awaiting arraignment without bail, because Marcus will argue you are a flight risk with confirmed travel plans to Florida. You will be disbarred from your consulting profession, your criminal record will follow you for the rest of your life, and you will still lose the house when the civil court grants me a default fraud judgment."
He stared at me, his eyes wide with a terrifying mixture of awe and absolute terror.
"You planned this," he whispered. "Since Wednesday."
"Since the moment I stood in the hallway with a bag of chicken soup and listened to you sell my life away," I replied.
Before Ethan could formulate another sentence, the sharp chime of our front doorbell echoed through the house.
Ethan flinched as if a gun had gone off. "Who is that? Did you call the police already?!"
"I didn't call the police," I said calmly. "Go see who it is."
Ethan stumbled to his feet, pulling his flannel robe around himself, and crept down the stairs like a condemned man walking to the scaffold. I followed three paces behind him, completely composed.
Ethan unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the front door open.
Standing on our porch in the crisp morning air was not the police.
It was his mother, Evelyn Morrison.
Evelyn was holding a casserole dish wrapped in aluminum foil, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her pearl earrings gleaming. Beside her stood Ethan’s older brother, David, holding two take-out coffee cups.
"Surprise!" Evelyn beamed, stepping past Ethan into the foyer without waiting for an invitation. "David called me this morning and said you had the terrible flu, darling! I told him, 'Clara works so hard, she shouldn't have to nurse him all weekend by herself.' So I made my famous shepherd's pie—"
Evelyn stopped mid-sentence.
She looked at Ethan, who was pale, sweating, and shaking. Then she looked at me, standing at the base of the stairs in a tailored corporate suit, holding a legal folder, looking like an executioner.
May you like
"Good morning, Evelyn," I said smoothly. "Good morning, David. You arrived just in time. Ethan was just about to make the most important financial decision of his life."
***
