Chapter 2 - The St. Paul Counter-Strike
I spent the night in the emergency room, receiving twelve stitches to close the jagged wound on my temple. By the time the sun rose over Los Angeles, I was sitting in the sterile, fluorescent-lit office of Marcus Vance, the most ruthless, high-profile divorce and corporate litigation attorney in California.
"He made bail at 4:00 AM," Marcus informed me, sliding a cup of black coffee across his glass desk. "His mother posted a fifty-thousand-dollar bond. They have already filed an emergency motion to freeze your joint checking accounts, claiming you are a flight risk."
"Let them," I said, taking a sip of the bitter coffee. The pain medication made my head fuzzy, but my fury kept me laser-focused. "The joint accounts are drained anyway. I want to know why they staged that dinner. I want to know why Genesis was so desperate for my St. Paul apartment."
Marcus typed furiously on his keyboard, pulling up a series of financial background checks his team had run overnight. He turned his massive monitor toward me.
"Because Jackson isn't a businessman, Clara. He’s a con artist who is drowning in debt," Marcus explained, pointing to a labyrinth of red numbers on the screen. "His last three 'luxury app ventures' were elaborate Ponzi schemes. He owes millions to private creditors. Three weeks ago, a massive balloon payment came due, and he defaulted."
I stared at the screen, the horrific truth finally snapping into focus. "He needed the equity."
"Exactly," Marcus nodded. "Genesis wasn't going to live in St. Paul. That was a smoke screen. Jackson needed you to transfer the deed to his mother so they could immediately leverage the property, take out a massive commercial loan against it, and use your hard-earned equity to pay off his furious investors before they filed federal fraud charges."
The sheer, breathtaking audacity of the betrayal made my blood run cold. While I was working sixty-hour weeks at my architectural firm, designing skyscrapers and saving every penny, my husband was plotting to steal the only tangible asset I owned to cover his criminal negligence.
"He thought if he ambushed me in front of his family, I would be too embarrassed to say no," I whispered, touching the bandage on my head. "And when I refused, he panicked."
"He didn't just panic, Clara. He made a fatal error," Marcus said, pulling a fresh manila folder from his drawer. "While we were digging into his debts, my forensic accountant found something else. Two months ago, Jackson applied for a two-million-dollar bridge loan with a private equity firm. The collateral listed on the application was the St. Paul apartment."
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My heart stopped. "I never signed anything."
"I know," Marcus smiled, a cold, predatory gleam in his eye. "He forged your signature on federal loan documents. Which means we aren't just filing for a restraining order and a divorce today. We are calling the FBI."
