Chapter 6: What Priya Heard
Marcus called the number back within sixty seconds.
Priya answered on the second ring.
Her voice was young and careful, like someone who had rehearsed what she was going to say and was determined to say it correctly.
"Thank you for calling back.
I wasn't sure you would."
"Tell me what you heard," Marcus said.
He didn't put the phone on speaker this time.
Dorothy watched his face instead.
Priya told him everything.
The anteroom.
The shared wall.
The bucket of flowers she'd set down.
Gloria's voice — quiet, deliberate, precise.
*The old woman.
She's the key.
We can demonstrate she's no longer capable of managing her own affairs.*
She told him Vanessa's response.
*She's a seventy-one-year-old woman, Mum.*
She told him Gloria's answer.
*Who is currently walking away from nearly a million dollars.
Sentiment is expensive.*
When Priya finished, Marcus was standing at the kitchen window with his back to the room.
"Would you be willing to put that in writing?" he asked.
"I already did," Priya said.
"I wrote it all down in my notes app while I was still in the anteroom.
Time-stamped.
Word for word as best I could remember." A pause.
"I can also tell you that I wasn't the only person who heard.
The head florist — Mrs.
Adeyemi — came in just before Gloria said the part about legal channels.
She heard the second half."
"Mrs.
Adeyemi," Marcus repeated.
"She told me, after they left, that if anyone needed her to speak up, she would." Priya hesitated.
"Mr.
Marcus, I've worked events for three years.
I've never heard anything like that.
What they were describing — going after a person's medical records, trying to have someone declared incapable — that's not just wrong.
That's—"
"I know what it is," Marcus said quietly.
"Thank you, Priya.
Please send me everything you wrote down.
And if Mrs.
Adeyemi is willing, please pass on my contact details."
He ended the call and stood still for a moment.
Dorothy had not moved.
"What did she say?"
Marcus turned around.
He sat down across from his mother.
He told her everything — not a softened version, not a careful selection of details.
All of it.
The legal channels.
The medical records.
The plan to have her declared incapable.
Dorothy listened without interrupting.
When he finished, she was quiet for a long time.
Then she said, "They were going to take my home and my mind."
"They were going to try," Marcus said.
She looked at him.
Something passed across her face — not fear, but something older and more complicated.
The look of a woman who has survived things and knows she will survive this too, but who needed a moment to feel the full weight of it first.
"Call Geoffrey," she said.
"Tonight.
Not tomorrow.
Tonight."
Marcus was already dialing.
Geoffrey listened to everything without interruption.
When Marcus finished, there was a brief silence.
"A time-stamped written account from one witness, a corroborating second witness, the document sent to your solicitor, the call to my office, the inquiry to Dorothy's GP's surgery, and the original transfer agreement." Geoffrey's voice carried the particular quality of a man assembling something solid.
"Marcus, this is no longer just a civil matter.
What you've described — the attempt to access medical records under false pretenses, the plan to use fabricated or exaggerated incapacity claims to seize property — this crosses into potential criminal territory."
"What kind of criminal territory?" Marcus asked.
"Fraud.
Conspiracy to commit fraud.
Possibly elder financial @buse, depending on how far they intended to take it." He paused.
"I want to bring in a colleague — a criminal specialist.
Not to alarm you, but because what you have is stronger than you may realize, and I want to make sure it's handled properly."
"Do it," Marcus said.
After he hung up, the kitchen was quiet again.
Dorothy reached across the table and put her hand over Marcus's.
"She told me she loved you," Dorothy said softly.
"Vanessa.
She said it to me directly, one afternoon.
She said, 'I love Marcus more than he knows.'"
Marcus said nothing.
"I believed her," Dorothy said.
She let out a long, steady breath.
"I'm a good judge of people.
I've always been.
And she fooled me completely."
"She fooled me too, Mum."
Dorothy squeezed his hand once.
Then she let go and picked up her tea.
"Not anymore," she said.
That night, Gloria sent Marcus a text message.
*Marcus.
I think we all said things today that we regret.
Perhaps there is a way forward that works for everyone.
I'd like to talk.
Just us.
No lawyers.*
Marcus read it once.
May you like
He forwarded it to Geoffrey.
He did not reply.
