Chapter 7 - The Savannah Account
The account held $93,411.
Vanessa admitted it before Marcus ever saw a statement.
“It was supposed to be enough for a year,” she said.
“A year of what?”
“Living.”
“Without me?”
“If I needed to leave.”
Marcus stood across from her in the kitchen.
Brooke had gone upstairs.
Maya was still at school.
“Why Savannah?”
“I used my sister’s address when I opened it.”
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“Calvin?”
“Yes.”
Marcus took a slow breath.
“How much did he keep?”
Vanessa looked uncertain.
“We agreed he would get ten percent.”
“Of stolen money.”
“Of money I earned.”
“That’s what you’re calling it?”
She slammed her palm against the table.
“I helped build Reed Outdoor.”
“And you were paid.”
“I ran payroll. Vendors. Insurance renewals. Collections. Your calendar. Half the contracts you forgot existed.”
“Then you negotiate compensation.”
“With a man who kept saying, ‘later’?”
Marcus had no clean answer.
She was right about one thing.
He had postponed hard conversations.
Equity.
Estate planning.
What Brooke’s place in the family would be legally.
He had believed love itself settled those questions.
Paperwork could wait.
Vanessa had not waited.
But the fact that he had failed did not turn theft into salary.
“What happened to the rest?” he asked.
“What rest?”
“If Greenstone and VBC received more than one hundred eighty thousand dollars, and there’s ninety-three thousand in Savannah, where’s everything else?”
“Taxes. Calvin’s share. Expenses.”
“The car?”
She looked down.
Marcus felt the answer before she spoke.
“Partly.”
He closed his eyes.
“How much?”
“Twenty-two thousand down.”
“From Greenstone?”
“Yes.”
“And the financing?”
“In Greenstone’s name.”
“So Brooke never owned it.”
“I was going to transfer it later.”
“When?”
“After everything settled.”
“What was supposed to settle?”
Vanessa stopped.
Marcus watched her carefully.
“Were you planning to divorce me?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Then what were you planning?”
She wiped beneath one eye.
“I wanted options.”
Marcus sat across from her.
“You stole Maya’s money for options?”
“No.”
“That fifty-one thousand wasn’t in Savannah.”
“No.”
“Then why move it to Brooke?”
Vanessa finally looked at him.
“Because the will.”
Marcus exhaled.
“We’re back to that.”
“You have no idea what that document did to me.”
“It was old.”
“It was real.”
“I wrote it before I met you.”
“And you had five years to change it.”
Marcus rubbed his forehead.
The will had been created when Maya was nine, shortly after Marcus’s divorce from Maya’s mother, Renee.
Renee was alive and living in Charlotte, but her relationship with Maya had become inconsistent after she remarried.
Marcus had become the stable parent.
Everything he owned had been directed toward Maya because she had been the only child in his household then.
When he married Vanessa, he told himself he would update the documents.
Then business expanded.
Then his father became ill.
Then COVID changed everything.
Then there was always another reason.
“Did you really believe I would leave Brooke nothing?”
“I didn’t know what to believe.”
“She calls me Dad.”
“That doesn’t create inheritance rights.”
The precision of the statement hurt.
Vanessa had researched this.
Marcus realized her fear had not been sudden.
It had matured quietly for years.
“Why didn’t you confront me?”
“I did.”
“You asked about the will twice.”
“I asked about our future a hundred times.”
Marcus remembered conversations he had dismissed because they came when he was tired.
“What happens if something happens to you?”
“We should put my name on something.”
“Should we create trusts for the girls?”
“Does Brooke have anything besides her 529?”
Later.
Later.
Later.
Marcus looked down.
“I failed you there.”
Vanessa began crying.
“You did.”
“But then you failed everybody.”
Her face tightened.
“I know.”
It was the first unqualified admission he had heard.
Marcus’s phone rang.
Alicia.
He answered.
“I’m with Vanessa.”
“Good,” Alicia said. “Ask her whether she recognizes North Pine Management.”
Marcus looked at his wife.
“North Pine?”
Vanessa frowned.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Alicia continued through the speaker.
“Then we have another problem.”
“What?”
“North Pine received sixty-four thousand dollars from Reed Outdoor over eighteen months.”
Marcus looked at Vanessa.
She shook her head.
Alicia said, “I traced the corporate registration.”
“Who owns it?”
“Not Vanessa.”
Marcus’s pulse quickened.
“Calvin?”
“No.”
Alicia paused.
“The registered owner is a woman named Patrice Carter.”
Vanessa stood so quickly the chair scraped the floor.
Marcus knew the name.
Patrice Carter was Vanessa and Calvin’s mother.
Brooke’s grandmother.
Vanessa whispered, “My mother doesn’t own a company.”
May you like
Alicia replied:
“According to the state of Georgia, she does.”
