Chapter 10 - SHE WANTED ME TO COME CRAWLING BACK
By Monday morning, employees were whispering.
By noon, vendors were calling.
By three, two clients asked whether my company was collapsing.
That was exactly what Teresa wanted.
She sent me a message through her attorney.
SETTLE THE FAMILY DISPUTE PRIVATELY AND ALL CLAIMS CAN BE WITHDRAWN.
Rachel read it twice.
“She’s offering extortion without calling it extortion.”
“What does she want?”
A formal proposal arrived one hour later.
Teresa demanded fifteen percent of my company.
A permanent monthly payment of ten thousand dollars.
Full reimbursement for “family caregiving expenses.”
And a written agreement preventing Amy from interfering with her relationship with Frederick.
Amy looked at me.
“She wants access to our son.”
“She won’t get it.”
There was one more condition.
I had to publicly apologize for humiliating her at Frederick’s birthday.
I laughed.
Rachel did not.
“She believes your reputation matters enough that you’ll pay to make this disappear.”
She was partly right.
My reputation mattered.
My employees mattered more.
So instead of paying Teresa, I called every employee into our shop.
I told them the truth.
Not every humiliating detail.
Enough.
I explained the company was being targeted through suspected fraudulent documents.
I guaranteed payroll personally.
I told anyone uncomfortable staying that I would understand.
Nobody left.
Ethan stood beside me.
Then our oldest foreman, Calvin, raised his hand.
“Your mama really tried to steal the company?”
A few people laughed nervously.
I nodded.
Calvin scratched his beard.
“Well, that explains why she came by last month asking where you kept signed contracts.”
The room went silent.
“What?”
Calvin looked confused.
“She said you sent her.”
I felt my pulse accelerate.
“When exactly?”
He checked his phone calendar.
July 11.
That date mattered.
The missing partnership agreement had still been inside my home office then.
Teresa had been hunting signatures in multiple places.
Calvin remembered something else.
She had not been alone.
A woman had waited in the parking lot.
He described her.
Mid-fifties.
Dark red hair.
Silver Lexus.
Rachel looked at me.
“Linda Hale.”
Victor’s sister.
The notary.
Detective Reed obtained a warrant for her records.
What investigators found turned the case upside down.
Linda had notarized thirty-seven suspicious documents during the previous three years.
Not just mine.
Properties.
Loans.
Ownership transfers.
Insurance papers.
My mother was not Victor’s first victim.
She was part of something much bigger.
May you like
And now federal investigators wanted to know how deeply Teresa was involved.
TOBE CONTINUED
