The ballroom doors opened.
Three attorneys in navy suits walked in.
The woman in front was named Katherine Marsh. Seventeen years prosecuting financial crimes for the State of Colorado. Now in private practice.
She walked right up to my parents.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cook,” she said. “We have a criminal fraud complaint prepared for filing Monday morning. Mr. Sterling and Ms. Cook are prepared to treat this as a civil matter instead. If full restitution is initiated immediately.”
She handed my father a single sheet of paper.
“Principal, plus interest, plus investigative costs. Sixty thousand dollars. Wired to the trust’s custodian bank. Tonight.”
My father looked down at the paper.
His hand was shaking.
The gold pen he’d been holding for me to sign his waiver slipped out of his fingers and rolled across the floor.
My mother stood beside him, whispering in his ear. Fast. Desperate. The way somebody whispers when they’re trying to calculate a number they already know is too big.
My father pulled out his phone.
He drained their savings account first. It wasn’t enough.
Then he opened a home equity line of credit on the house. A line he’d opened four years earlier. Against a house he’d told the entire family was paid off.
He moved the rest of the money over in three separate transfers. Standing right there in the middle of that ballroom. Thumbing at his own phone screen with shaking hands. In front of two hundred people.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trip slip toward the service exit by the kitchen. Moving with the fast, low-profile walk of a man who’s decided the situation no longer includes him.
Nobody stopped him.
Nobody needed to.
Sutton sat down hard in the nearest empty chair. Her white cocktail dress wrinkled around her. Her mascara ran down her face, following the same path her color had taken twenty minutes earlier.
Behind her, the ice sculptures went on melting on their pedestals. S and T. Dripping onto the tablecloths.
Katherine Marsh’s phone buzzed. She looked at it. Then she nodded at Beckett.
“The custodian bank confirms receipt,” she said. “Sixty thousand dollars.”
Beckett crossed the ballroom floor to where I was standing.
He took my hand.
“Good bones,” he said quietly.
Two hundred phones were held up in the air, recording.
I didn’t look at any of them.
I looked at him.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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