Chapter 8 - The Cornered RatBy Friday evening, Trent’s world was burning.
He was sitting on a stained armchair in a $70-a-night motel room in Tempe. The air smelled faintly of stale tobacco and bleach. Brooke was lying on the bed with her back to him, sobbing quietly into a flat pillow because her designer luggage was still locked inside my house and she had been forced to buy sweatpants at a gas station.
Trent’s phone rang. The caller ID showed his attorney, Gary Rosen—a low-tier family law lawyer he had hired from a late-night billboard advertisement.
Trent snatched up the phone instantly. "Gary! Tell me you fixed this! Tell me we're filing a emergency motion against her!"
"Trent..." Gary’s voice came through the line, completely devoid of its former bravado. "Where are you right now?"
"In a motel!" Trent yelled. "Why does that matter?! Did you get the house back?!"
"Trent, listen to me very carefully," Gary said, his tone grim and urgent. "An hour ago, Arthur Pendelton’s office served me with a three-hundred-page forensic audit packet. They’ve submitted evidence of wire fraud, digital token forgery, and corporate embezzlement totaling over $560,000 to the Maricopa County Superior Court and the federal prosecutor."
Trent felt the air leave his lungs. "What... what are you talking about? That was marital money!"
"It wasn't marital money, you idiot!" Gary shouted through the phone, losing his professional composure entirely. "It was corporate capital belonging to Lawson Enterprise Solutions LLC! You forged her digital signature on commercial wire transfers! Do you understand what that means?!"
Trent gripped the phone so hard his knuckles turned white. "She... she wouldn't send me to prison. She loved me!"
"She doesn't love you, Trent! She's destroying you!" Gary yelled back. "Pendelton gave us an ultimatum. You sign the revised, unconditional divorce settlement by ten o'clock on Monday morning—relinquishing all claims to marital assets, alimony, property, and agreeing to liquidating G&W Luxury Living LLC to reimburse her corporate account—or they turn the evidence over to the FBI."
Trent’s hand began to shake uncontrollably. "No... no, there has to be another way! What about my parents' rental houses?!"
"They’ve placed a lis pendens on all three properties!" Gary said. "Your parents can't sell them! They can't rent them! The bank is foreclosing on their personal accounts by next week! If you don't sign this agreement, you and your parents are going to end up in federal prison!"
Trent dropped the phone onto the carpet. His breathing became fast and ragged, his chest heaving as terror finally took complete hold of his mind.
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Brooke turned around on the bed, looking at him with wide, frightened eyes. "Trent? What did he say? Are we going to be rich?"
Trent looked at her—the twenty-four-year-old woman he had chosen over the woman who had built him an empire—and realized with horrifying clarity that he had traded gold for dust.
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