Caroline looked triumphant.
Then I continued.
“But there are conditions.”
I placed one printed page in front of her.
“You and Derek will make your own meals. You’ll wash your own clothes, clean your bedroom, and clean the guest bathroom you use. Neither of you will enter my office, our bedroom, or the west wing without permission.”
Caroline scoffed.
“Anything else, Your Majesty?”
“Yes.”
I pointed to the final paragraph.
“You will both leave this house by September fifteenth.”
Derek leaned forward.
“We can’t possibly fix everything in one month.”
“You don’t have to fix everything. You have to start.”
Richard nodded.
“I’ll pay for one appointment with a financial counselor. Nothing else.”
Caroline stared at him as if he had betrayed her.
“You’re choosing her over me.”
Richard shook his head.
“I’m choosing adulthood over dependency.”
“I’m your daughter.”
“And I love you.”
“Then prove it.”
Richard held her gaze.
“I have been proving it with checks for seven years.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Then she stormed upstairs.
Derek stayed behind.
For the first time since arriving, the arrogance disappeared from his face.
“There’s something else,” he said quietly.
Richard’s expression sharpened.
“What?”
Derek glanced toward the staircase and then at me.
“Caroline doesn’t know the real reason we were evicted.”
A door slammed upstairs.
He lowered his voice.
“I used our rent money.”
Richard stared at him.
“For what?”
Derek swallowed.
“A business investment.”
I watched him carefully.
After years in corporate risk, I had learned that hesitation often revealed more than words.
“What kind of investment?” I asked.
He said nothing.
Richard stood.
“Answer her.”
Derek rubbed his hands over his face.
“It wasn’t exactly an investment.”
My stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“About eighty thousand.”
A voice came from behind us.
“Eighty thousand what?”
Derek froze.
Caroline stood at the bottom of the staircase, her expression completely changed.
“What did you do, Derek?”
Part 3
Derek stared at her for several seconds.
“Can we talk upstairs?”
“No.”
Her voice was quieter now.
Which somehow made it more dangerous.
“You just told my father you used eighty thousand dollars. We didn’t have eighty thousand dollars.”
Derek said nothing.
Caroline walked closer.
“We didn’t have eighty thousand dollars, Derek.”
Richard stood beside the table with his arms folded.
I stayed silent.
Whatever came next had to come from Derek.
Finally, he whispered,
“I took out loans.”
Caroline stopped.
“What loans?”
“Personal loans.”
“In whose name?”
Silence.
The color drained from her face.
“In whose name?”
“Some were mine.”
“Some?”
He looked down.
“One was joint.”
Caroline grabbed his arm.
“I never signed for a loan.”
He pulled away.
“You signed electronically.”
“I did not.”
“You’ve signed things before.”
“Not an eighty-thousand-dollar loan!”
Richard reached for his phone.
“I’m calling Daniel.”
Daniel Mercer, Richard’s longtime attorney, had been sitting quietly at the table since before Caroline came downstairs.
Until then, she seemed to have almost forgotten he was there.
Daniel removed his glasses.
“Caroline, before anyone makes accusations, you should obtain your credit reports immediately.”
She kept staring at Derek.
“What did you invest in?”
He muttered something.
“What?”
“Crypto.”
Richard closed his eyes.
Caroline gave one short laugh.
There was no humor in it.
“You borrowed money in my name to buy cryptocurrency?”
“I thought it was going back up.”
“How much did you lose?”
“Most of it.”
“Most?”
“I still have some.”
“How much?”
“Maybe twelve thousand.”
Caroline stepped backward.
For the first time since I had known her, she looked truly frightened instead of angry.
“You forged my signature.”
“I didn’t forge anything.”
“You used my information without permission.”
“I was trying to save us!”
“No. You were gambling.”
Derek slammed his palm against the table.
“You spent money too!”
Caroline recoiled.
“You wanted the apartment. You wanted the vacations. You wanted the restaurants. Every month you said your father would help if things got bad.”
Richard’s expression changed.
That sentence seemed to hurt him more than anything Caroline had ever said to me.
She saw it.
“Dad, I never said—”
Derek laughed bitterly.
“You said it constantly.”
“Shut up.”
“You told me your father would never let you fail.”
“Shut up!”
“You told me he’d eventually give you part of the family company.”
Richard spoke.
“There is no part of the company waiting for you.”
Caroline turned.
“What?”
“My estate plan does not transfer control of Whitmore Manufacturing to either of my children.”
She stared at him.
Richard had founded Whitmore Industrial Components at thirty-six and spent nearly three decades building it into a profitable regional manufacturer employing more than eight hundred people across Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
Caroline had always treated it like an inheritance that simply hadn’t reached her yet.
Richard continued.
“Your brother has never assumed he will inherit management control either.”
