It started three years earlier with Colin’s gambling. Sports books, then poker games where the stakes outran his paycheck fast. By the time our grandfather died, he owed close to two million dollars to people who don’t send polite reminders.
Vanessa found out four months after the funeral. Instead of leaving, she buried it — Whitaker’s accounts, the payments to Derek’s shell company, the padded warehouse invoices, all of it moved in pieces small enough that no casual read of the books would catch it.
Then the forged trust amendment. Me deployed. Our mother willing to sign whatever kept the peace. A notary Colin knew from a card table, paid to backdate the one document that gave Vanessa cover for every transaction they’d already made.
It worked for over a year.
Marsh showed me one exhibit from the interview herself, off the record, because she said I deserved to see it before it became a court document. A text thread between Colin and Vanessa from the week I flew home for good. Colin: She’s going to find the Meridian payments eventually. Vanessa: Not if there’s nothing left to find by the time she looks.
