Chapter 5 - Half a Million Dollars
The forensic review uncovered the debt piece by piece.
Daniel and Marissa owed one hundred and forty thousand dollars on business credit lines.
They owed ninety thousand to private lenders.
They had failed to pay contractors, suppliers, taxes, and insurance premiums.
Their home had a second mortgage Eleanor knew nothing about. Their cars were financed. Several luxury purchases had been charged to company accounts.
The total was four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars.
Then Rebecca found the forged guarantee.
Someone had copied Eleanor’s signature from an old property document and attached it to a loan application. The application falsely claimed Eleanor had agreed to use her house as secondary security.
The bank had noticed inconsistencies during an internal audit. That was why Rebecca had been contacted.
“There is more,” Rebecca told Eleanor during a private meeting.
A temporary power-of-attorney document had also been prepared in Eleanor’s name. It had not yet been used, but the draft would have allowed Daniel to manage certain accounts if Eleanor was declared unable to handle her finances.
Eleanor felt cold.
“Unable?”
“The attached statement suggests memory problems.”
“I do not have memory problems.”
“I know.”
“Who created it?”
“The document came from Daniel’s home computer.”
Eleanor looked through the window of Rebecca’s office. Pedestrians moved along the street below, continuing with their ordinary lives.
“What happens now?”
“That depends on what they do next. The bank has frozen the fraudulent application. We can report the forgery immediately.”
Eleanor thought of Daniel as a baby asleep against Thomas’s chest. She remembered his first day of school, his wedding, and the trembling phone call he made after his father died.
“I need to give him one chance to tell me the truth.”
Rebecca did not argue.
“One chance,” she said. “But do not meet them without protection.”
Eleanor agreed to record future conversations and forward every document.
She hoped Daniel would confess before the situation became irreversible.
Instead, he called that night and asked whether she had considered the loan agreement.
May you like
When Eleanor said no, his voice hardened.
“You’re making this much worse than it needs to be.”
