Chương 7
Tessa spread a legal pad on the small dining table.
“I represent both of you only if your interests remain aligned,” she said. “Right now, I’m going to assume they might not.”
Gavin bristled. Gwen said, “Good.”
Tessa’s mouth twitched.
They explained the family company. Cole Family Holdings owned the white house, the duplex, the old shop building, and a brokerage account created from the sale of Gavin’s father’s equipment. Gavin operated Cole Custom Metal through a separate company but paid rent to the family entity.
“Who receives the rent?” Tessa asked.
“My mother manages it,” Gavin said.
“That was not the question.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you receive statements?”
“No.”
“Tax forms?”
“My mother sends them to our accountant.”
“Have you seen them?”
“No.”
Tessa turned to Gwen. “What did you sign?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you remember, not what you think it means.”
Gwen described the April afternoon. She had returned from chemotherapy nauseated and dizzy. Margaret said medical bills could threaten the family assets. Paige had arranged a remote notary through a video call. Papers appeared on a tablet. Gwen signed several electronic fields while Paige held the device.
“Did the notary ask whether you understood?” Tessa said.
“I think so.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“Were you threatened?”
“Not directly.”
“Were you denied medication, transportation, housing, or care unless you signed?”
Gwen hesitated.
“Margaret said Gavin would lose the shop if I didn’t.”
“That may matter. It may also be hard to prove.”
Gavin leaned forward. “She was drugged.”
“She was medicated,” Tessa said. “People under medical treatment can still enter agreements. The question is capacity and coercion, not whether she had medicine in her system.”
“She didn’t understand.”
Tessa looked at Gwen. “Do you agree with that?”
“I understood that they said I had to sign.”
“That is a different statement.”
Gavin’s knee bounced beneath the table.
Tessa asked for every account, device, email address, cloud service, and document they could access legally. She advised them not to enter Margaret’s property without permission and not to guess passwords. She asked whether Gavin still had keys.
“Yes.”
“Do not use them.”
“That’s my house.”
“Maybe. Until we examine the documents, the word my is doing too much work.”
Gwen looked at Gavin, but wisely said nothing.
Tessa listened to the backyard recording through headphones. When it ended, she removed them slowly.
“It helps,” she said.
Gavin felt relief for half a second.
“It does not prove fraud,” Tessa continued. “It shows immediate interest in transferring assets after learning of possible money. It gives context to other evidence if we find it.”
“What about what Paige did to Gwen?” he asked.
“That is separate. Gwen decides what she wants to pursue.”
“I want my ring back,” Gwen said.
Tessa wrote it down.
“What else?”
“My medical records. My medication. My laptop. Clothes that don’t smell like that house.”
“Anything financial?”
“I want to know what I signed.”
“That is a strong place to start.”
Tessa requested records from the family company and sent preservation letters to Margaret and Paige. She also contacted the remote-notary service identified through an email in Gwen’s account. The process would take time.
Margaret responded within two hours by hiring her own attorney.
That afternoon Gavin received an email stating that Cole Family Holdings had terminated his month-to-month use of the old shop building. He had thirty days to vacate unless he signed a new lease at triple the rent.
He read it twice at the metal shop while six employees pretended not to watch him.
The shop occupied twelve thousand square feet of a converted agricultural equipment warehouse. Gavin’s father had bought it when Gavin was sixteen and spent years complaining about the roof. The roof still leaked near the plasma cutter. Orange buckets appeared whenever it rained.
Gavin had built his company there from one welding table and a used forklift. Marcus’s name was still painted inside a cabinet from the summer they tried making custom motorcycle frames. The frames were ugly. They sold two.
Now Margaret’s attorney called him an unauthorized occupant.
His foreman, Luis, approached with a clipboard.
“Bad news?” Luis asked.
“Rent dispute.”
“How bad?”
“We may have to move.”
Luis looked around the shop. Sparks flashed behind a welding curtain. A radio played quietly near the loading bay.
“In thirty days?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s bad.”
“I know.”
“We have the hospital stair job due in five weeks.”
“I know.”
“And the restaurant railings.”
“I know.”
Luis set the clipboard down.
Gavin looked at him. “Say whatever you’re going to say.”
“You keep saying you know like it means you have a plan.”
“I have an attorney.”
“Attorneys don’t move brake presses.”
The brake press weighed nine tons.
Gavin rubbed his numb fingers.
“We’ll figure it out.”
Luis did not argue, which was worse.
Gavin called Tessa from his office. She told him not to ignore the notice and not to assume it was enforceable. The lease records mattered. The company’s ownership mattered. His prior contributions mattered. None of that prevented practical damage while they fought.
“Can we stop her?” he asked.
“We can seek temporary relief, but courts require evidence and time.”
“Thirty days is time.”
“Not much of it.”
“What do you need?”
“Documents.”
“Which are in her house.”
“Some may be with the accountant, the bank, the county, or the tax preparer. Start with sources you can access legally.”
He called the family accountant. The receptionist said Margaret had already instructed them not to release records without written authorization from the managing member of Cole Family Holdings.
“Who is listed as managing member?” Gavin asked.
“I’m not permitted to discuss the account.”
“I own part of the company.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole.”
He drove back to the apartment angry enough to taste metal.
Gwen was at the table sorting medication into a weekly organizer. Her scarf had slipped back, exposing the cuts near her temple.
May you like
“They’re evicting the shop,” he said.
She stopped moving.
