Chapter 6: The Thing Julian Thought He Had
I called Darcy from the lobby of her building, even though she was twenty floors above me.
I needed the cold air.
I needed to think without walls around me.
She answered on the first ring.
"He said he has something," I said.
"What could he have, Darcy?
I've gone through everything.
Five years.
I can't think of a single thing."
"Walk me through the last year," she said.
"Not the finances.
Anything unusual.
A conversation, a document he asked you to sign, anything you felt strange about afterward."
I stood on the pavement and thought.
"Fourteen months ago," I said slowly.
"He asked me to co-sign a loan application.
He said it was for a business investment.
A property development deal with a colleague.
I asked to see the details and he said the window was closing, that there was no time, that he needed my signature that afternoon."
"Did you sign?"
"Yes.
I trusted him." The words tasted like something old and spoiled.
"I never saw the final paperwork.
He said he'd file it and bring me a copy.
He never did.
I forgot about it."
Darcy was quiet for three seconds.
"What was the colleague's name?"
"He never told me.
I asked.
He said it was better if I wasn't involved in the details."
"Sloan." Her voice had changed.
"I need you to come back upstairs."
I went back up.
Darcy was already on her laptop when I walked in, her reading glasses on, two tabs open.
"There's a property development LLC registered in Cook County fourteen months ago," she said.
"Majority stakeholder is a man named Gerald Foss.
Julian is listed as a minority partner." She turned the screen toward me.
"The LLC took out a construction loan eighteen months ago.
The loan has a co-signer."
I looked at the screen.
My own name looked back at me.
"He used my signature on a fraudulent loan application," I said.
"The loan went into default six months ago," Darcy said.
"The lender has been attempting to contact the co-signer.
That's you.
You are legally liable for two hundred and thirty thousand dollars."
I sat down.
"He was going to use this," I said.
"If I pushed the divorce, he was going to tell me I was on the hook for a defaulted loan.
He was going to say that fighting him would cost me more than staying."
"That's exactly what he was going to do," Darcy said.
"And if you hadn't hired the forensic accountant, if you hadn't moved first, you might never have found this until the lender came after you directly."
"Can we fight it?"
"Your signature was obtained under false pretenses.
He misrepresented the nature of the document.
We have the recording from last night as evidence of his pattern of coercion." She took her glasses off.
"Yes.
We can fight it.
But Sloan — this moves the case into different territory.
This isn't just divorce.
This is fraud."
I looked at the name on the screen.
My name, on a document I had never read, attached to a debt I had never agreed to.
"Then let's treat it like fraud," I said.
Darcy picked up her phone.
"I'm calling the financial crimes unit.
I have a contact there." She paused with the phone in her hand.
"Julian is going to find out we know.
He'll move fast."
"So will we," I said.
She dialed.
I sat across from her in the quiet conference room and listened to her explain, in precise and unhurried language, exactly what Julian had done.
Through the tall windows, Chicago spread out below us in the grey afternoon light.
May you like
Somewhere in that city, Julian was making his own calls, pulling his own strings, certain he still had a card left to play.
He didn't know we had already found it.
