Chapter 4
The next morning, I woke up before everyone else, feeling remarkably calm.
On my desk sat a thick folder prepared by my attorney. Inside were bank records of the loan Arthur took against my father’s farm, copies of the forged power of attorney, call logs, text messages, and two legal documents I had been waiting days to use.
The first was an official confession and indemnity agreement where Arthur admitted in writing how he acquired the funds and accepted full legal and financial responsibility for the debt.
The second was a petition for divorce.
At ten in the morning, my attorney arrived. Arthur froze, setting his coffee cup down. “Who is she?”
I laid the folder on the dining table. “We need to talk.”
Olivia immediately stepped up behind him. “Marital problems are handled within the family, Genevieve.”
“That’s exactly why you should sit down and listen,” I replied.
I pulled out the copy of the power of attorney first. Arthur’s face drained of all color. Chloe stared at her brother. Olivia frowned. “What is that?”
“The document Arthur used to take out a quarter-million-dollar loan using my father’s home, farm, and my mother’s burial plot as collateral.”
A suffocating silence fell over the room.
“Genevieve, I can explain—” Arthur stammered.
“Great. Start by explaining why you told a sixty-seven-year-old man I was sitting in a German prison.”
Olivia turned slowly toward her son. “What did you do?”
“I… I needed cash fast,” Arthur whispered.
“You told a elderly man his only child was going to rot in a foreign jail,” I said, my voice cracking with emotion for the first time. “You made him weep for a week. You convinced him to risk everything he built over forty years. And while he was ready to lose his home to save me, you had him on his knees scrubbing your mess off my floor.”
Olivia looked away. Chloe crossed her arms defensively. “Well, the old man spilled his stuff everywhere—”
I locked eyes with her. “Do not speak about my father like that in my house ever again.”
Arthur slammed his fist on the table. “Enough! Yes, I took the money! But I didn’t lose it, I invested it! In a few weeks, we’re going to make three times that amount back!”
There it was. The exact justification I was waiting for.
May you like
“In those commercial lots upstate?” I asked.
His eyes widened. “How do you know about that?”
