Chapter 8 - THE SECOND APPLICANT
The second applicant was not Luke.
It was a limited-liability company called Cypress Harbor Holdings.
Its listed business address was a rented mailbox in Nashville.
I read the name twice because it meant nothing to me.
David explained that unfamiliar companies could be used in legitimate transactions, but we needed to know who owned this one and why it appeared on a loan involving my apartment.
By noon, public records revealed that Cypress Harbor had been formed less than three weeks earlier.
Oscar had signed the organizing document.
Chloe was listed as its manager.
Brenda's home address appeared as the mailing address for tax notices.
Three people at the dinner table had been preparing a business before anyone had mentioned it to me.
I tried to remember whether Luke had looked surprised when Brenda announced that my apartment would go to Chloe.
He hadn't.
He had looked annoyed that the conversation was happening in front of witnesses.
David asked the bank whether funds had already been disbursed.
Vance confirmed that the application was suspended and no loan proceeds had been released.
That was the first uncomplicated good news I had heard in two days.
Maya bought lunch from a sandwich shop, then watched me stare at it.
“You have to eat,” she said.
“What if I'm wrong about Luke?”
She set down her drink.
“Wrong about which part?”
“The apartment, the loan, all of it.”
“He threatened to handle your property without you.”
“I know.”
“He watched his mother throw out your clothes while your wrist was burned.”
“I know.”
“You don't have to solve the whole conspiracy to recognize what happened to you.”
Her voice was gentle, which somehow made it harder to hear.
At three, Luke arrived at my studio without warning.
Felicia called to tell me he was pacing outside the glass door.
I instructed her not to let him in and to contact building security if he refused to leave.
He sent seventeen texts in fourteen minutes.
The first offered reconciliation.
The next accused me of embarrassing his family.
The final three mentioned that Chloe's child deserved a decent home.
I sent all seventeen to David.
At 4:40, the bank's fraud officer asked for an in-person statement at the downtown branch the following afternoon.
David proposed that we attend together.
Then I received a call from a woman who identified herself as Oscar's former bookkeeper.
She had heard my name in a conversation and found my business number online.
“I shouldn't be calling,” she whispered.
“Then why are you?”
“Because I saw your name on a spreadsheet, and you were marked as an asset.”
I gripped the phone.
“An asset?”
“Under a column labeled collateral reserve.”
“What else was on that sheet?”
She took a breath.
May you like
“Your mother-in-law's house.”
