Chapter 8 - The Desperate Offer
The Silver Diner was bustling with the lunchtime rush. Smell of grease, clattering plates, and the hum of casual conversation provided the perfect public shield. Mark sat in the corner booth, hunched over, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in three days.
I slid into the opposite booth. Ethan was sitting three tables away, dressed in plain clothes, calmly reading a newspaper.
Mark flinched when he saw me. "You brought him."
"Ethan goes where I go," I said, folding my hands on the table. "You have five minutes, Mark. What do you want?"
Mark leaned forward, his hands trembling so badly he had to clasp them together. "I’ll sign whatever you want. Complete, uncontested divorce. You keep the penthouse. You keep the trust. You can have every stick of furniture in the house."
"I already have all of that, Mark," I replied smoothly. "The court granted me sole possession this morning. What else?"
"I'll give you Chloe's condo in Miami! It's under a separate LLC—the feds haven't frozen that one yet. It’s worth six hundred thousand! Take it, sell it, just drop the assault charges and tell the IRS the transfers were a marital gift!"
I looked at him, feeling a profound sense of pity, eclipsed quickly by disgust. "You’re offering to give me a condo bought with *my* stolen money, to cover up your crimes so you don't go to federal prison?"
"I don't belong in prison, Claire!" he hissed, his voice rising, drawing glances from a nearby booth. "Look at me! I’m an executive! I won’t survive in there!"
"You should have thought about that before you punched my brother, Mark. And before you spent three years treating me like your personal doormat."
Mark’s face shifted. The pathetic groveling melted away, replaced by that familiar, ugly sneer. He leaned across the table, his eyes narrowing into slits.
"You think you’ve won, don't you?" he whispered savagely. "You think you're so smart with your lawyer and your fighter brother. But you forgot one thing, Claire."
"And what is that?"
"My mother’s boutique wasn't just funded by your money," Mark chuckled, a deranged edge to his voice. "Three years ago, when the market crashed, we took out a loan. A private loan. From people who don't go to the police. People who don't care about court injunctions."
My heart skipped a beat, but I kept my face blank.
"Whose name did you use, Mark?"
Mark smiled, a sickening, yellowed grin. "The boutique was incorporated as a subsidiary of Sterling-Vance Holdings. You signed the primary articles of incorporation six years ago, darling. The loan was for one point two million dollars. And now that Diane's shop is closed and the accounts are seized... those people are going to come looking for the guarantor."
May you like
He tapped his forefinger on the table. "They don't care about our divorce, Claire. They care about their money. And if I go down, I’m handing them your new address."
***
