Chapter 5: What Carol Freyne Knew
Carol Freyne's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building twelve blocks from the venue.
I was still in my wedding suit when I walked through the door.
She didn't comment on it.
She simply stood, shook my hand, offered me a seat across from her desk, and set a manila folder on the surface between us.
"I'll be direct," she said.
"My client was your fiancée's previous business partner.
They entered into a development agreement with the Hargrove family four years ago.
By the end of the second year, my client had lost everything he put in."
"What happened?"
"The short version: the Hargroves restructured the terms of the partnership at a critical point in the project.
My client needed a bridge loan to keep his stake.
Diane Hargrove offered one — through a subsidiary — at terms that guaranteed he would default." She opened the folder.
"When he defaulted, the Hargroves absorbed his equity position.
The project closed eighteen months later at a significant profit.
My client received nothing."
I looked at the documents in the folder.
Agreements, amendments, a loan schedule with interest figures circled in red pen.
"That's not illegal," I said carefully.
"No," Carol agreed.
"Predatory.
Calculated.
But structured to stay within the law." She turned one page toward me.
"What may cross a line is this.
My client believes the bridge loan terms were misrepresented to him verbally at the time of signing.
He has a recorded phone call that supports his position."
"Why are you coming to me?"
She looked at me steadily.
"Because my client's investigation into the Hargroves' pattern of conduct uncovered your name.
And because the structure they used on him — the close relationship, the manufactured dependency, the controlled access to financing — matches what he believes they intended to replicate with you." She paused.
"He wanted someone to know before it was too late."
I sat with that for a moment.
"Vanessa," I said.
"Was she involved?"
Carol chose her words carefully.
"My client believes Vanessa was aware of the broad strategy.
Whether she participated actively or simply didn't ask questions, I can't say."
Outside the fourteenth-floor window, the city moved in its ordinary afternoon pattern — taxis, pedestrians, a cloud crossing the sun.
"What does your client want?" I asked.
"Justice, ideally.
Realistically — documentation that the same pattern was attempted again.
Corroboration." She closed the folder.
"He's not asking you for money.
He's asking you to look at what you know and decide whether it lines up with what I've told you."
I thought about the conversation with Vanessa three months ago, when we were planning the wedding.
She had suggested, casually, that my father might want to invest in a property project her family was developing.
I had mentioned it to Dad.
He had gone quiet in a way I hadn't understood at the time.
I told Carol about it.
She wrote it down without expression.
"Would you be willing to make a formal statement?" she asked.
"What would that involve?"
"A recorded conversation.
Dates, context, what was said.
Nothing you'd need to appear in court for, at this stage." She set her pen down.
"Mr.
Bennett, I'm not asking you to kjll anyone's reputation on the basis of one conversation.
I'm asking you to help establish whether there is a pattern."
My phone buzzed on the arm of the chair.
Vanessa again.
I turned the screen face-down.
"Give me a day," I said.
Carol nodded.
She slid a card across the desk.
I picked it up and stood.
"One more thing," I said.
"The recorded call your client has.
What does it prove exactly?"
She looked at me for a moment before answering.
"It proves Diane Hargrove knew the loan terms would trigger a default.
It proves she discussed it in advance.
And it proves she used her daughter to maintain my client's trust while the structure was being put in place."
The room felt smaller suddenly.
"How long have they been doing this?" I asked.
Carol opened a second, thicker folder that had been sitting to the side of the desk.
May you like
"At least three other families," she said.
"That we've found so far."
