Chapter 4
Seventeen families.
Not all working for me.
Some worked Marden properties.
Two worked at a club we jointly owned.
One woman cleaned Celia’s apartment.
Another man drove Wallace.
Three were children of former employees.
Inherited debt.
A phrase I hated more each minute.
Wallace called it obligation.
I called it convenient theft.
Celia called it tradition.
That surprised me.
I looked at her.
“You believe this?”
She lifted her chin.
“You believe in family debts.”
“Debts belong to people who created them.”
“Your organization collects from families.”
“No.”
My voice sharpened slightly.
“We collect from agreements people actually made.”
That distinction mattered.
Celia had spent two years watching my world and apparently learned only the costume.
Cold rooms.
Quiet voices.
Old names.
She confused intimidation with entitlement.
Then Wallace said:
“This is how old houses survive.”
I looked around the engagement pavilion.
Flowers.
Crystal.
Champagne.
A woman standing beside me who had been forced to choose groceries with coins thrown onto a carpet.
“No.”
I looked at Elodie.
“This is how old houses rot without noticing.”
Wallace’s eyes hardened.
Then I asked the question that mattered.
“Where did the withheld money go?”
Celia answered:
“Against what Marden owes you.”
There.
The entire pavilion seemed to exhale.
I already suspected it.
Hearing it still changed something.
“You used employee wages to pay me.”
“Not directly.”
Of course.
Clean language.
Money moved through Marden household accounts.
Then monthly payments came to me.
I believed Wallace was reducing his eight-million-dollar debt through asset sales and business revenue.
Instead part of it came from people he claimed owed him.
People like Elodie.
I looked at Rafe.
“How much has Marden paid us this year?”
“Six hundred eighty thousand.”
“How much came from these seventeen families?”
Nobody knew yet.
Wallace smiled faintly.
“Money is money.”
Wrong.
Source matters.
Especially when men use my name to make exploitation look authorized.
Elodie whispered:
“Did my money go to him?”
She meant me.
I looked at her.
“Maybe.”
Her face fell.
That hurt.
I continued.
“If it did, every dollar goes back.”
Wallace stepped forward.
“You cannot unravel settled payments.”
I looked at him.
“Watch me.”
Then Celia said:
“You’ll destroy my father.”
I turned.
“No.”
May you like
My voice stayed level.
“I’m about to find out how much of your father was being held upright by people he kept kneeling.”
