Chapter 3
“Arthur, what the hell is this?” I demanded, standing up from the table so fast my chair scraped loudly.
“Claire signed the divorce decree forty-five minutes ago! She walked away with the house and a standard lump sum!”
“Read the private agreement you signed back in 2014, Daniel,” Arthur advised with a heavy, exhausted sigh.
“When your firm almost went bankrupt after the commercial crash in West Loop, who put up the capital?”
My mind raced backward twelve years to a cold November evening in our first small apartment.
I had been weeping at the kitchen table, facing total financial ruin before my career had even truly started.
Claire had quietly handed me a cashier’s check for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
She told me it was an inheritance from her late grandmother’s trust, given to her with no strings attached.
“She gave me a loan,” I stammered into the receiver, sweat breaking out across my forehead.
May you like
“It wasn’t a loan, Daniel,” Arthur corrected me bluntly.
“It was a structured convertible equity option, drafted by her family’s estate attorneys in Boston.”
