My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Bid

I told the teacher I'd call her back in an hour with a plan.

I didn't have a plan.

I had a burrito and a man with salsa on his tie.

"He froze it to buy time," Caelen said. "Lenders are pulling out of the tower since your mother's guarantee went. If Corwin defaults, the lenders sell the loan to whoever's fastest."

"And Spencer wants to be fastest."

"With the teachers' money. Then he owns the tower, and the teachers own a lawsuit."

I stared at the freeway.

Six years of my life were in that tower.

I knew every lender on it by their first name and their coffee order.

"Then we're faster," I said.

Caelen turned his head.

"We?"

"Lowell buys the loan. Before Spencer can." My heart was going hard. "If we hold the loan, nobody takes the tower without going through us. The teachers' share stays where it is."

"That's forty million dollars of your mother's money."

"It's a good building, Caelen. It's a bad owner."

He looked at me for a long time over the hood of the car.

Then he wiped his mouth, found the salsa on his tie, and swore.

"Write it up on the plane," he said. "I'll check your numbers."

"That's helping."

"It's checking."

I called the teacher back from the gate.

I told her not to sell anything, sign anything or call Spencer.

"Hold on for me," I said. "Can you do that?"

"Honey, I taught fourth grade," she said. "I can hold on through anything."

The board met on Friday morning.

I stood at the end of the walnut table with nine pages I'd written on a tray table over Kansas.

The white-haired man let me get through four of them.

"Wanda," he said. "Let me understand. The cake bride wants forty million dollars of this firm's money to buy a loan on her ex-boyfriend's building."

A couple of people laughed.

"Yes," I said.

"Why on earth would we do that?"

"Because the tower's sixty percent built, on the best block in Santa Monica, and its lenders are terrified." I clicked to the next page. "They'll sell us the loan at seventy cents on the dollar. Finished, that building is worth twice what we'd pay."

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