"Corinne," he said, letting the door shut. He kept his voice low. "I came back here to pay for your uniform. What Vanessa did wasn't right. She’s had two martinis and gets reckless closing a land deal, but you shouldn't have taken that."
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a slim calfskin wallet, and peeled off two crisp hundred-dollar bills.
"Take it," Greg urged, holding the cash toward me. "Buy yourself a clean shirt and take the rest of the night off. You don't need to file an incident report with Alvarez. Just let it go."
I didn't reach for the money. I took one slow step forward until the fluorescent light exposed the dark, bruised stain clinging to my ribs.
"You're the closing attorney on Instrument 2026-08892, aren't you, Greg?" I asked.
His hand froze in the air. The two bills trembled slightly in his grip.
"What?" he stammered, his color fading instantly.
"The emergency docket filing recorded at 4:15 PM," I said, my voice dropping into a flat, steady register. "The expedited assignment of debt for parcel 44-098-B. You stamped it with your notary seal and filed an affidavit swearing our eighty acres of orchards are abandoned."
Greg swallowed hard, lowering the cash. "Corinne, that’s business. The credit union packaged non-performing rural notes for bulk restructuring. Holbrook Development bought the paper through legal channels. My office just handled the documentation. We didn't know—"
"You knew my father planted those trees," I said, backing him against the steel shelf. "You knew Tess and I live in that farmhouse. You drove past our fruit stand two weeks ago handing out campaign flyers."
"It's already recorded," Greg whispered, backing away. "The clock is running. If you make a scene, Alvarez will have you arrested. Vanessa has relatives on the police board. Cause a disruption and you'll spend the weekend in a cell while the sheriff padlocks your barn Monday morning."
He shoved the two folded bills into my front pocket, turned on his heel, and pushed through the swing-door back toward Table Four.
I pulled the two hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and dropped them into the floor drain beneath the sink. Then I walked out through the rear exit into the gravel alley.
The autumn air hit my wet chest like ice. Across the lot, the Dodge was dark; Tess was lying flat on the bench seat. I unlocked the toolbox in the truck bed, pulled out my heavy canvas work coat, and zipped it to my chin, hiding the wine.
Through the sheer side curtains of the private dining room, Table Four was brightly lit. Vanessa was laughing, cutting into her steak, the damp manila folder resting squarely beside her wineglass.
Greg was right about one thing: the statutory clock was running, and calling the police would only get me detained while Vanessa finalized the seizure. But inside that damp folder on Table Four was the promissory note Marcus had illegally assigned. If I walked away tonight, our farm was gone by Monday morning. I turned back toward the restaurant's side entrance, keeping my boots silent on the gravel.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Greg had his smartphone pressed hard against his ear, his knuckles white around the casing.
"Marcus, stop talking over me and listen," Greg muttered, his voice hushed and strained. He paced three steps toward the ice machine, his polished leather shoes squeaking against the wet rubber matting. "I told you she was here. Tess couldn't work the shift, so Corinne took the floor. She saw the county docket stamp on the cover sheet before Vanessa pulled it away."
He paused, listening. A vein stood out along the side of his neck, pulsing beneath his stiff collar.
"No, she didn't read the rider," Greg snapped into the phone, running an agitated hand through his styled hair. "She didn't have time. But she knows the instrument number, and she knows it was stamped at 4:15 this afternoon. If she gets in front of Judge Gidley at his house tomorrow morning before Monday's docket opens, the whole assignment falls apart under statutory review. You swore to Vanessa that the default paper trail was completely sealed."
A tinny, frantic voice buzzed through the phone’s speaker. Marcus Vance was speaking from the other end, fast and uneven. Greg pulled the phone an inch from his ear, grimacing.
"I don't care about your compliance audit," Greg whispered harshly into the mic. "You're the branch vice president. You signed the administrative override. You took cashier’s check number 8841 out of the drawer, logged it as an unverified third-party tender due to an alleged signature mismatch, and diverted the four thousand two hundred dollars into the credit union's internal suspense ledger. That created the technical ninety-day delinquency. You manufactured the default, Marcus. That was the deal."