Chương 5
“A site option.”
“What site?”
“An adjacent parcel.”
“You bought more property?”
“We secured the right to buy it.”
“For three hundred thousand dollars.”
“It gives us access to the riverfront.”
“The plans I approved didn’t include riverfront access.”
“The plans you reviewed.”
Robert looked up.
Ethan’s face had gone pale.
“You spent three hundred thousand of the construction contingency on an option your board did not approve?”
“It wasn’t the construction contingency.”
“It came from the same account.”
“It was reimbursable.”
“By whom?”
Ethan closed the laptop halfway.
Robert put one hand on the screen and held it open.
“By whom?”
“We had an investor interested.”
“Had.”
“They withdrew.”
“When?”
“February.”
It was now October.
Robert sat back.
Rain tapped the window. A siren passed somewhere below.
“The lender knows?” he asked.
“They know the account was reduced.”
“Do they know why?”
“They received statements.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Ethan stood and went to the window.
Robert watched his son’s reflection in the glass. At forty, Ethan still rubbed the back of his neck when cornered, exactly as he had when he was twelve and Robert found a cracked basement window after a baseball game.
“Vanessa changed the Westbridge status,” Robert said.
“She formatted the deck.”
“She changed it.”
“She was trying to help.”
“Did you ask her to?”
Ethan did not answer.
Robert felt something settle inside him. It was not satisfaction. He would have preferred anger. Anger moved.
This felt heavier.
“You used my transfer to cover an undisclosed loss,” he said.
“I used your transfer to finish a project you’ve supported for six years.”
“Those are different sentences.”
“They lead to the same building.”
“No. One leads to a building. The other leads to a lie.”
Ethan turned. “You want to talk about lies?”
“Yes.”
“You told me this was my company.”
“It is.”
“You told me the house was a gift.”
“It was.”
“You told us we should treat it like our home, then you moved in and corrected everything from the thermostat to where Vanessa kept the serving bowls.”
Robert’s fingers tightened on the desk.
“You said I could stay.”
“For a while.”
“You never gave me a date.”
“Because Mom had been dead four months and I didn’t want to hand you a move-out schedule while you were forgetting to eat.”
“I was not forgetting to eat.”
“You lost twenty pounds.”
“I was grieving.”
“So were we.”
Robert looked away.
Ethan’s voice lowered. “You paid for the house, and every time we made a decision you disliked, the fact that you paid for it entered the room before you did.”
“I never asked for the house back.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“You let your wife put my clothes in a hallway.”
“I know.”
“You stood there.”
“I know.”
“And now you want me to sympathize with your serving bowls.”
Ethan pressed his lips together. He reached for the laptop bag, missed the handle, and tried again.
“The company has seventy-two hours,” he said. “Crossway’s cancellation will be visible to the lender this morning. If they suspend the account, we miss payroll and default on vendor agreements.”
“Then give Dana and Lee access to everything.”
“Lee Okafor?”
“Yes.”
“He works for you.”
“He works for facts.”
“He has hated this project from the beginning.”
“He questioned it.”
“Same thing in your world.”
Robert stood. The height difference between them had increased as Robert’s back stiffened with age, but he did not feel smaller.
“If the records are accurate, the review will help you.”
“And if they aren’t?”
“Then the review may be the only thing that saves anyone.”
Ethan laughed under his breath. “There it is.”
“What?”
“You saving everyone.”
“I’m not giving you eight hundred thousand dollars without knowing where it goes.”
“You were willing Friday.”
“Friday I had false statements.”
Ethan slung the bag over his shoulder.
At the door, he looked again at the photograph.
“I should have answered you,” he said.
Robert waited.
Ethan’s hand remained on the handle.
“But you shouldn’t have asked me in front of everyone.”
He left before Robert could decide whether those sentences amounted to an apology.
Lee Okafor arrived at ten with a canvas briefcase, a folding umbrella, and the expression of a man who had already been told several versions of the same disaster.
He was sixty-two, compact, soft-spoken, and incapable of pretending a bad number had become good because someone explained its childhood.
Dana came with him.
They moved downstairs to a hotel conference room because Robert’s desk could not hold three laptops and because Dana refused to conduct what she called “a financial autopsy” beside an unmade bed.
Maya, Ethan’s assistant, delivered digital access before noon. Ethan granted read-only permissions to the accounting system. Vanessa sent vendor files but did not answer Lee’s request for her email archive.
“That will become a problem,” Lee said.
“She’ll provide it,” Robert replied.
Lee looked at Dana.
Dana said, “We’ll request it again.”
For two hours, they reviewed the structure of the project. The lender had approved construction financing based on equity contributions, lease milestones, and cost controls. The project had fallen behind schedule after environmental remediation took longer than expected and steel prices rose. Those problems were real and documented.
So were Ethan’s decisions.
He had expanded the residential design after a market consultant predicted demand for larger units. He had approved imported fixtures before final financing. He had paid the Larkspur option fee without full board consent. Then, rather than report the shrinking contingency, he had delayed invoices and moved certain costs into future periods.
Nothing Lee found looked like a man stealing for yachts or gambling.
It looked like a man trying to outrun embarrassment.
“That can destroy a company just as effectively,” Lee said.
Robert stood at the coffee station, stirring sugar into a paper cup. “Can it be finished?”
“Probably.”
May you like
“Probably is not an answer.”
“It is when I have two hours of access and incomplete records.”
