Three days after my twin sons were born, my husband brought twenty-two members of his family into a hospital room and offered me two hundred thousand dollars to sign away my marriage, my children, and my right to ever ask about their company's accounts. They expected me to cry. I read every page and signed all of them.

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PART 5 — THE FOLDER

It took two years.

Caspian pleaded in the spring of last year. Misappropriation of client funds, and it is a real sentence and he is serving it.

Adelaide's case went to trial because she is sixty-four with no record and because her defence was that she had trusted her son with the accounts and had signed what he put in front of her.

She was a signatory for nineteen years. The jury took four hours.

Thackery Row Holdings surrendered its licence. Four hundred and eleven tenants had claims against the state's recovery fund and most of them have been paid something, and I have been told the fund has never had a year like it.

Marisol Quade was not charged. She was two years qualified and she signed things she was given, which is exactly what she was hired for, and she testified for eleven hours over two days and she was, by everybody's account including mine, completely truthful.