Just then Mack’s phone buzzed. He looked at the two of them and said, “Excuse me just a moment, please.” Reaching for his phone, he headed down the pathway.
“You seem to be getting along just fine with my brother,” Nick said.
“When he’s not being difficult,” she announced. Nick burst out laughing. She smiled at him. “You seem like a nice man, Nick. Why would you want to be a lawyer?”
At that, he laughed even harder. “Lawyers can and do offer good and helpful services to their clients.”
“Well, my divorce lawyer didn’t,” she said. “She screwed me over on the paperwork, and then took my husband and moved into my bed,” she said, with a shake of her head. “A lot of that I can be grateful for now. But the betrayal—”
“More than the personal betrayal,” he said, “was the financial betrayal.”
“We have a separation agreement.”
“Which is null and void because of her representation in this case.”
“Oh, so I don’t have a separation agreement?”
“You don’t, not a legal standing one.”
“So what does that actually mean?”
“It means that you could move back into your old house, if you wanted to.”
She stared at him in shock. “That’ll get a little too cozy in my bedroom, don’t you think?” she muttered.
He burst out laughing again. “Obviously that’s not what you want to do, but you have every right to that home, just as he does, because there is no agreement right now.”
“What does the other lawyer say? Besides, you say we don’t have an agreement, and my ex won’t agree.”
Nick shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve submitted several documentation complaints about your divorce lawyer’s behavior, and she’s coming up for a complaint with the bar herself for another issue. Other than that,” he said, “I’ve started a lawsuit against her on your behalf.”
She stared at him in surprise. “But that will get expensive. My ex used to talk about it all the time.”
“Talk about what?”
“About suing people and saying he would ruin them.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “At the same time we have a very strong case against her.”
“What is the basis of our case against her?”
“It has to do with her not fulfilling her legal obligations and actually being criminally negligent for filing the paperwork that she chose to file.”
“Oh my. So maybe she won’t be allowed to live in that fancy house either?”
“I’m going for jail time and to have her stripped of all her legal standing in the community.”
“So then she couldn’t make a living afterward?”
“Not on the backs of her unsuspecting clients anyway.”
“Isn’t that a little extreme?”
He shook his head. “No. Fraud is a big deal, and she cheated you out of many hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly more.”
At that figure, her jaw dropped, and her eyes went round. “What?”
He looked at her and said, “You really have no idea how much he’s worth, do you?”
She shook her head. “No, I really don’t, but it was all in the business.”
“That house alone is worth four million.”
“Yeah, but he was never going to let me have the house,” she said, “not that I want it.”
“And that’s fine,” he said. “He can buy out your share.”
She looked at him. “You mean, he would give me money for my share of the house?”
“Yes, which is probably why he went the route he did.”
“It’s absolutely why he went that route. He often told me before that I could leave any time I wanted, but I would never get anything from him.”
“And he went out of his way to make sure that happened. But they both crossed the line when they cheated you out of everything. If he’d given you a decent or a reasonable settlement, it wouldn’t have come to this.”
“No, I wouldn’t even have considered that this was an issue. What would be a reasonable settlement?” she asked cautiously.
He looked at her with a smile and said, “Several million at least.”
She let out her breath in a long slow whoosh. “That would be rather unbelievable.”
“That’s because you don’t realize just how much you’re entitled to.”
“You still have to get it though, and he won’t hand it over easily.”
“Nope, he probably won’t, which is one of the reasons for using your divorce lawyer. To make sure that it was even more complicated.”
“And I did sign away my rights.”
“But that document isn’t legal in standing because she’s up for charges on her issues too.”
“Interesting,” she muttered. “So my divorce attorney actually committed fraud by doing what she did?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “She was not representing you. She was throwing you to the wolves.”
“Yeah, I felt like it at the time, but, by then, I was only looking for freedom. I wasn’t really seeing the wolf pack out there, waiting for me.”
“No, and that’s why it happened,” he said.
“What can we do now?”
“I have a lot of paperwork I need you to sign,” he said, and she looked at him carefully.
“But are you any better than she is?”
He stared at her and said, “If only you had asked some of those questions when you worked with her.”
Chapter 11
Doreen winced and nodded. “Right, but I had known her for a long time, and I thought I could trust her. But instead I think she’s the one who told him when I was looking at leaving. So he immediately took action. Instead of my jewelry being in the safe, where it was supposed to be, it got moved somewhere else, and the money he had left for my allowance that month disappeared. When I asked him for it, he said I must have spent it. It was a series of little things that all happened within the last few days that I lived with him.”
“You’re right. I’m sure she was feeding him all kinds of garbage. But the bottom line is that she represented you. You had retained her on your behalf, and instead she used you to get to him.”
“Absolutely,” she said sadly. “Because people are like that.”
“Not all people are like that,” he said, gently correcting her.
She smiled. “You’re telling me that you’re different,” she teased.
“I’m very different,” he said, “and people like her are the ones I like to go after.”
“Well, that’s fine,” she said, “as long as they don’t know too much about it.”
“They’re bound to find out when I start filing the paperwork, but that’s not your problem.”
“Says you. But what if they find me here?”
“Do you not feel safe here? Or do you really feel like he’ll come after you?”
“I haven’t thought he would be bothered, but he really does care about his money, and he really cares about that house.”