A week later, I was back in his office, my cold hands clutching a cardboard coffee cup.
“This is bigger than I thought,” Marcus said, sliding a large folder toward me.
“What did you find?” I asked.
He opened the book to the first page, a photo of a building with a modest sign: Reed Global Imports.
“On paper, this company looks thriving,” he said. “But it’s been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for years. It owes its suppliers more than two million dollars. The bank is preparing to foreclose. It’s mortgaged all its properties twice.”
He turned the page to another section.
“The house in the hills? It’s heavily mortgaged too. They’re behind on payments. In six months, maybe less, they’ll be evicted.”
I stared at the figures that told a story of desperation: late fees, court proceedings, overdue payment notices.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I muttered. “They live as if everything is fine.”
“That’s precisely the problem,” Marcus said. “Some people would rather lose everything than admit they aren’t who they say they are.”
Then he turned another page.
“Your daughter,” he said more quietly, “transferred money from her personal account to the company. Small amounts at first. Then larger sums. This pattern matches the transfers she made from Chicago.”
The coin tilted.
“Are you saying that the money I sent for her…” I began.
“…she immediately took over and ran her struggling business,” he concluded. “She’s keeping them afloat.”
I felt dizzy. “Does Nathan know about this?” I asked.
“Oh, he knows,” Marcus said. “He’s authorized to do everything.”
He hesitated for a moment before pulling out one last envelope.
“There’s something else,” he said. “Nathan has been seeing another woman regularly for two years. Her name is Lauren Price. He pays for her apartment in a complex fifteen minutes from his house.”
He posted photos: Nathan at a restaurant, in a doorway, on a balcony. Always with the same woman. Always smiling.
I didn’t cry. I remained silent for a long time. Deep inside, something old and silent stirred.
“How much do they owe in total?” I finally asked.
Marcus told me.
I did the calculations in my head: my business in Chicago, my savings, the investments I’d made with every spare dollar.
“I want to buy their debt,” I said. “All of it. The house, the business, the loans. Everything.”
Marcus looked stunned.
“Mrs. Harper, if you do that, you risk losing everything you’ve built.”
“I’ve already risked what mattered most to me,” I said. “I left my daughter in their hands.” Becoming a Creditor:
For three weeks, my life was a whirlwind of signatures, meetings, and wire transfers.
Marcus contacted all the creditors: the bank, the suppliers, the private lenders.
I offered a quick payment in exchange for transferring all their debts to my name. Some protested. Most accepted enthusiastically. Money talks, especially when it arrives on time.
I signed so many times my hand cramped: Linda Harper, the woman from the small house in Ohio who used to count coins at the grocery store, was now quietly becoming the legal owner of the things the Reeds cherished most: their business and their home.
I squandered almost everything I had built in Chicago. My safety net vanished with every signature.
But every time fear gripped my throat, I pictured Grace on her knees on that marble floor.
“I can start over,” I told myself. “She won’t be able to if I leave her there.”
Once I did that, I found myself with a folder full of documents that changed everything.
Officially, I was now the primary creditor of Reed Global Imports and the owner of Reed’s house in the hills.
Deep down, I was still just a mother trying to rewrite history before it quietly ended. The Confrontation: I invited Grace to my hotel room the next morning.
She arrived with her hair pulled back and wearing a turtleneck sweater despite the California heat. She looked thinner than I remembered, as if she’d shut herself away for years.
“I brought some cinnamon rolls,” I said, holding up a paper bag. “From the bakery downstairs. They’re not as good as ours, but they’ll do.”
Her expression softened.
“Judith says pastries are bad for my figure,” she whispered. “Nathan agrees.”
“Well, have two,” I said. “Just to mess with them morally.”
She laughed, a small laugh, but a real laugh.
Over coffee, I showed her the bank statements. The repossession orders. The list of debts. The photos of Nathan and Lauren.
At first, she refused to look. Then she did. Her hands trembled, but she turned each page.
“How long?” she asked hoarsely.
“Years,” I replied. “You kept them from going under.”
“And he…” She touched one of the photos with her fingertip. “Took the money and paid for that woman’s life?”
“Yes.”
She pressed her lips together so tightly they turned white.
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