Chapter 4: What the Attorney Knew
I didn't sleep that night.
Theo sat with me at the kitchen table until past midnight, the documents Matthew had forwarded spread across his laptop screen.
Maisie had fallen asleep in the car on the way home.
Gus and Poppy had gone to bed without asking questions, the way children learn to do when they sense the adults need quiet.
"Walk me through the original agreement," Theo said.
"Everything you remember."
"Grant came to me six months before we separated.
Harrow Urban was still small — four employees, one completed project.
He said Harborstone was going to be the one that established them.
A mixed-use development on the waterfront in Providence.
He needed bridge capital."
"And you provided it."
"Eighty thousand dollars.
My savings from twelve years of freelance work." I looked at the screen.
"His attorney — a man named Clifford Pryce — drew up the participation agreement.
It gave me a fifteen percent interest in the Harborstone project returns."
"Did you have your own attorney review it?"
I was quiet for a moment.
"Grant said Pryce was handling it for both of us.
That it was simpler that way.
I trusted him."
Theo didn't say anything to that.
He didn't need to.
"During the divorce," I continued, "Pryce sent a letter to my attorney — a woman I'd found through a colleague, someone I could afford at the time — stating that my Harborstone interest had been redeemed at par value eighteen months prior.
The letter included a transaction summary.
My attorney reviewed it and told me it appeared consistent with the agreement terms."
"But there was no actual redemption payment."
"I thought there had been.
There was a deposit in my account around that time — about eleven thousand dollars.
Grant said it was a partial return on the interest, that the project had underperformed early on." I stopped.
"I was exhausted.
We'd been fighting for eight months.
I believed him."
Theo turned the laptop toward me.
"Matthew's documents show the Harborstone project generated a net return of approximately four point two million dollars across its two major asset sales.
Fifteen percent of that is—"
"Six hundred and thirty thousand dollars," I said.
The number sat between us.
"Pryce structured the transfers," Theo said.
"He had to.
A participation interest doesn't dissolve on its own.
Someone filed the paperwork to move it into Northgate Passive.
Someone then filed to dissolve Northgate.
Those are deliberate acts."
"Pryce was Grant's attorney."
"He was listed as attorney of record for both of you during the divorce."
I felt the cold settle in.
Not anger yet — something quieter and more clarifying than anger.
"He had a duty to me," I said.
"Yes," Theo said.
"He did."
He closed the laptop.
He looked at me across the table the way he always did when he was about to say something he had already decided carefully.
"I want to call someone in the morning.
A woman named Grace Alderton.
She's a litigation attorney — she handled a fraud recovery case for one of my board members two years ago.
She's good, Mara.
She's very good."
"This might be nothing," I said.
"It might have a legitimate explanation."
"It might," Theo said.
"Let Grace decide that."
I nodded.
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
My phone lit up on the counter.
A message from an unknown number.
*You should have stayed home tonight.
Some things are better left alone.
— A friend.*
I showed it to Theo.
May you like
He read it once, then took a photograph of it with his own phone.
"Grace," he said, "is going to want to see that too."
