My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Fraud or Fool

In Lowell Capital's boardroom the head of risk, Caelen Flaherty, plays the cake video and calls her a fraud or a fool, Sadie demands the case, and her mother hands her the keys to the apartment one floor above Caelen.

Lowell Capital lived on the eleventh floor of a gray stone building on State Street.

My great-grandfather had picked the carpet.

Nobody had changed it since.

I walked into the boardroom at nine on Monday in my only black suit, on four hours of sleep.

Six board members sat around a long walnut table.

My mother sat at the head of it in navy, her glasses on their chain.

She looked at me once, head to toe, and nodded at an empty chair.

That was the whole welcome.

A man stood at the window with his back to the room.

Tall, broad, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, dark hair.

He turned around.

Blue eyes, a nose that had been broken at least once, and no expression at all.

"This is Caelen Flaherty," my mother said. "Head of risk."

"Ms. Lowell." He didn't offer his hand. "Sit down. This won't take long."

He tapped a tablet.

The screen on the far wall lit up with my face.

My face, under a bridal veil, with Spencer's hand full of cake coming at it.

Two million, one hundred thousand views.

Somebody at the table coughed into a fist.

Somebody else didn't bother to hide the laugh.

Caelen let it play to the end.

The crowd laughing, a beat too long, in a quiet boardroom.

Then he switched to the cream page.

My signature filled half the screen.

"At one o'clock Sunday morning, Treadwell Ridge Partners put this firm on notice for sixty million dollars," he said. "The pledge is executed by Ms. Lowell as trustee. The trust owns forty percent of this firm. If the claim holds, we sell assets to cover it."

He looked straight at me.

"So I've got one question. Is she a fraud, or is she a fool?"

The room went still.

"Because if she's a fraud, she helped her boyfriend's friends rob us. If she's a fool, she signed away her father's money at a party." He shrugged. "Either one costs us sixty million. I just need to know which one to write in the file."

My mother didn't move.

She was waiting.

Everyone was.

I stood up.

"I'm the fool," I said.

A few eyebrows went up.

"I signed it at my own wedding without reading it. That's the stupidest thing I've ever done, and I'm going to have to live with it."

I put both hands on the walnut.

"But I'm not going to be the one who pays for it."

"That's not up to you," Caelen said.

"It is if I can prove what they did."

A man with white hair at the far end snorted.

"Wanda, with respect. The girl on the screen with cake on her face wants to run a sixty-million-dollar fraud claim?"

"The girl on the screen spent six years underwriting Corwin Group's projects," I said. "I know every lender on that tower. I know which ones lunch together and which ones hate each other. I know the date on that letter is a lie, because I watched myself sign it on Saturday."

"Which proves nothing," Caelen said. "Your word against three people who'll say you signed it in September."

"Then I'll find something better than my word."

He studied me.

Like I was a column of numbers that didn't add up yet.

"With what?"

"Give me the case and find out."

The white-haired man laughed out loud.

My mother took off her glasses.

The laughing stopped.

"Thirty days," she said.

Every head turned to her.

"Sadie works the Treadwell Ridge claim. She reports to risk. She gets no title, no office and no special treatment." She folded the glasses. "In thirty days she brings this board proof, or she signs a statement that she pledged the trust in September and we let the lawyers take it from there."

"Wanda," Caelen said. "She's the subject of the file. You can't put her on it."

"I just did."

"It's a conflict."

"Then watch her closely." My mother stood up. "Meeting's over."

The board filed out around me.

The white-haired man patted my shoulder on his way past.

"Don't take it personally, sweetheart. Watched the video three times myself."

Caelen stayed by the window with his arms folded.

"For the record," he said, "I think you're lying."

"For the record," I said, "you haven't asked me anything yet."

Something flickered in his face.

It might have been the start of a smile.

It didn't finish.

My mother came back in with her coat over her arm and a small brass key ring.

"Your apartment," she said. "Third floor of a triple-decker in South Boston. I bought the building last year."

I took the keys.

"You bought a building for me?"

"I bought a building," she said. "It had a vacancy."

Caelen pushed off from the window.

"Wanda. Which triple-decker?"

"The one on East Fifth."

"That's my building."

"I know." My mother pulled on one glove. "You're on the second floor. You said you wanted to watch her."

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