Painful.
Six months earlier, he had stood in my hallway and called me selfish because I would not sign over my home to his wife.
Now he loved me.
“What did your review of Cassidy’s finances reveal?” Caldwell asked.
Jamal sighed.
It was impressive, really. The timing. The posture. The lowered voice.
“A catastrophe,” he said. “Cassidy is maintaining a lifestyle she cannot afford. Luxury condo. High-end vehicle. Credit lines. Personal loans. Margin loans. She has leveraged everything.”
Judge Whitman’s eyes sharpened. “Margin loans?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Jamal said smoothly. “She appears to have borrowed against investment accounts she did not understand. The debt is now spiraling. In my professional opinion, she cannot manage her affairs.”
Mr. Caldwell passed documents to the bailiff, who delivered them to the judge.
Copies landed on our table with a thick slap.
My attorney, Evelyn Kensington, did not touch them immediately.
She was sixty-two, silver-haired, elegant, and terrifying in the way only a woman who had spent forty years destroying arrogant men in court could be terrifying.
She nudged the stack toward me.
“Look closely,” she murmured.
I did.
The first page was a fake bank statement.
My name.
My address.
My old checking account number.
My stomach tightened.
Not because the document was convincing.
Because the account number was real.
I had opened that checking account years earlier for utilities. It had been dormant for over a year.
The second page showed a default notice.
The third showed a margin call.
The fourth showed a corporate lending classification that no normal person in that courtroom would notice.
But I noticed.
And so did Evelyn.
I leaned close. “He stole my mail.”
Her eyes did not move from the paper. “When?”
“Six months ago. Family dinner at my condo. He said he went to the bathroom, but I caught him coming out of my office.”
Evelyn’s mouth curved slightly.
Not a smile.
A blade.
“He used your real information to make the fraud look authentic,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Good.
Only Evelyn Kensington could hear that her client’s brother-in-law had committed identity theft and call it good.
Part 2
Jamal kept talking.
That was his first mistake.
Arrogant people think silence means fear.
It never occurred to him that I was letting him climb higher so the fall would break more bones.
“In my expert opinion,” Jamal told the court, “Cassidy is within weeks of total collapse. If her family does not intervene, she will lose the condo anyway.”
