My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Program
Brett left with the litigator's card in his pocket.
The conference room stayed silent until the elevator dinged.
Then the analyst with the whiteboard said, "Two weeks."
"Two weeks," I said.
"If the money goes offshore, the teachers never see it again."
"Then the loan closes first. Monday."
It closed on Monday at four in the afternoon.
The lenders' lawyers sat on one side of the walnut table, and my mother sat on the other.
They slid the purchase agreement across to me to sign as the officer on the deal.
Sixty-one pages.
I uncapped a plain black pen from the supply closet and turned to page one.
One of the lenders' lawyers checked his watch.
"It's all standard, Ms. Lowell."
"Then it won't take long."
It took fifty minutes.
I found a wrong date on page thirty-eight and a missing zero on page fifty.
They fixed both by hand and initialed them.
My mother didn't say a word the whole time.
When I finally signed, she took her glasses off and folded them.
"Your father read like that," she said.
Lowell Capital owned the loan on the Ocean Avenue tower.
Nobody could take the building without coming through us.
Not Spencer. Not his offshore accounts.
That night I called the retired teacher on video.
She'd gathered eleven of the club in her living room, with the lemon tree in the window behind them.
Eleven gray heads leaned toward the screen.
"Is it safe?" one of them asked. "Our money?"
"The building's safe," I said. "Your money's still frozen in his fund. That's the part I need help with."
"What kind of help?"
"Spencer's having his investor day on the twentieth. In Santa Monica." I took a breath. "He's going to stand in front of a room and tell everyone how devoted he is to you. I'd like you to be in that room. All forty-one of you. In person."
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