Chapter 4 - MELISSA WANTED RYAN TO FUND THEIR NEXT BUSINESS
Ryan confronted Melissa through his attorney.
No screaming hotel scene.
No public fight.
Paper.
Questions.
Bank records.
She answered faster than Daniel did.
Yes, she had worked with Northline.
Yes, she had hidden the extent from Ryan.
Yes, the affair began months after the business partnership.
Then:
“No, I did not forge Ryan’s signature.”
Who did?
She claimed Daniel’s broker handled investor documentation.
Convenient.
The broker, Malcolm Reed, claimed he received signed documents from Melissa.
Less convenient.
No one confessed.
So investigators would determine what they could.
Then Melissa admitted something else.
The $600,000 Bellmont deposit was supposed to come from Ryan.
He stared at the message.
“How?”
She had planned to tell him Vale & Finch won an exclusive restaurant-development contract.
She would ask him for another $300,000 investment.
Daniel planned to contribute another $300,000 from Harlow.
My company.
Again.
Except three weeks earlier, I had frozen his access.
That was why Daniel had become frantic lately.
He told me the bank was “updating security.”
He asked for copies of old trust documents.
He suggested we consolidate accounts.
I thought he was finally becoming organized.
No.
He was searching for another path to my money.
Then Ryan found texts between Melissa and Daniel.
Daniel:
CLAIRE’S ACCOUNTANT IS ASKING QUESTIONS.
Melissa:
CAN YOU MOVE IT BEFORE SHE FREEZES YOU?
Daniel:
TOO LATE.
Melissa:
THEN RYAN HAS TO DO SIX.
Ryan read that twice.
“Six means six hundred?”
Likely.
He laughed bitterly.
“They were going to replace your money with mine.”
Then another message:
Daniel:
ONCE BELLMONT IS OPEN, EVERYONE GETS PAID BACK.
The phrase every failing entrepreneur loves.
One more deal.
One more month.
One more loan.
Then everything gets fixed.
Except Northline was already losing money.
The forensic accountant estimated the company had negative equity of nearly $900,000.
Bellmont was not expansion.
It was a desperate attempt to grow out of debt.
Then Rebecca discovered something in the proposed Bellmont agreement.
The landlord required the principals to demonstrate $1 million in unencumbered liquidity.
Northline did not have it.
So Daniel’s packet listed:
Claire Vance — affiliated guarantor.
Net liquid assets:
$1.4 million.
I stared.
“I have never agreed to guarantee anything.”
Rebecca nodded.
Then she turned to page thirty-one.
A draft personal financial statement.
My salary.
My investments.
Harlow cash reserves.
Even the life-insurance proceeds I received when my mother died.
Daniel had given strangers a map of my financial life.
At the bottom:
SPOUSAL CONSENT — PENDING.
He had not yet forged that one.
Then the Bellmont leasing director called.
They had received an email that morning withdrawing Claire Vance as guarantor.
Signed:
Daniel Vance.
Why would Daniel suddenly remove me?
May you like
Because he had realized I knew.
And apparently, for the first time, he was beginning to dismantle his own scheme.
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