Chapter 8 - The Company’s Missing Money Was Not Where I Expected

Ryan Patel, a forensic accountant retained through my legal team, reviewed Hale Residential’s books.

I expected theft.

A secret luxury account.

Money funding Brooke.

Reality was less cinematic.

Grant had made a sequence of terrible business decisions.

Expanded too fast.

Guaranteed two projects personally.

Kept employees during a downturn because he believed new contracts were coming.

Advanced money to subcontractors.

Used short-term credit to cover long-term problems.

Then began hiding how bad things were.

Some personal spending existed.

Hotels with Brooke.

Meals.

Trips disguised as business.

But those expenses did not sink the company.

Bad management did.

That mattered.

Grant later tried to blame everything on the affair.

It was easier than admitting he had spent eighteen months gambling on recovery.

Brooke, as controller, had warned him repeatedly.

Then helped him manipulate reports when pressure increased.

She was both participant and person he lied to.

Everybody wanted a simple villain.

There wasn’t one.

There were simply degrees of responsibility.

Then Ryan found a draft closing statement.

If the $600,000 loan funded Friday:

$140,000 would pay delinquent taxes.

$175,000 would stabilize suppliers.

$90,000 payroll.

$75,000 litigation reserve.

And $120,000 would repay:

BROOKE LANE — MEMBER ADVANCE.

I stopped.

“She put in more than sixty-two thousand?”

Ryan nodded.

“Additional advances last month.”

Brooke’s personal rescue depended directly on my signature.

Now her violence made even uglier sense.

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