Chapter 4 - Seventy-Four Thousand Dollars
Andre barely slept.
At 5:40 the next morning, he found Rachel at the kitchen table.
A mug of coffee sat untouched beside her.
“You really slept in there?”
“I didn’t sleep.”
Andre sat across from her.
For a while neither spoke.
Finally Rachel said, “Tell me everything.”
Andre nodded.
So he did.
The company had begun missing financial targets eight months earlier.
At first the explanation had seemed ordinary: delayed payments, higher material costs, a lawsuit involving a subcontractor.
Calvin managed finances and insisted the situation was temporary.
Then a major hospital renovation project lost money despite appearing profitable on paper.
Andre began reviewing invoices personally.
Vendor payments did not match project schedules.
Equipment leases were higher than expected.
Several invoices had been approved under Andre’s electronic signature.
He did not remember approving them.
Rachel listened without interruption.
“How much do you think is missing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Estimate.”
“Maybe two hundred thousand.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“And you gave the company another seventy-four.”
“To cover payroll while I investigated.”
“You could have told me.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Andre stared through the dark kitchen window.
“Because I knew what you’d say.”
“What?”
“That I was saving my father’s company at the expense of my own family.”
Rachel’s voice softened.
“Were you?”
He looked at her.
The answer was painful because it was not clearly no.
“My father gave me everything.”
“No,” Rachel said. “Your father gave you a company. Your family is sitting in this house.”
Andre’s eyes lowered.
Rachel reached across the table but stopped before touching him.
“I am not asking you to stop loving what he built.”
“I know.”
“I’m asking why you think loving it means carrying every problem alone.”
Andre inhaled slowly.
“Because when Dad got sick, he made me promise I’d keep everyone employed.”
“Did he make you promise to hide debt from your wife?”
“No.”
The word came quietly.
Upstairs, Jordan listened from the hallway.
He had become good at moving silently.
Too good.
He returned to his room before either parent saw him.
At school, his anxiety turned into anger.
During algebra he snapped at a classmate for tapping a pencil.
At lunch he ignored Miles.
By chemistry, his teacher asked him to stay after class.
“Jordan, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve missed three assignments.”
“I’ll do them.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Jordan stared at the floor.
His teacher lowered her voice.
“You’re bright. But lately you look like you’re somewhere else.”
Jordan nearly laughed.
He was somewhere else.
He was thinking about bank accounts, personal guarantees, warehouses and whether his family would still live in the same house by Christmas.
“I’m just tired.”
“Then start there.”
She handed him a revised assignment schedule.
“You can make up two labs. But you need to meet me halfway.”
Jordan accepted the paper.
“Okay.”
That afternoon he found Andre’s truck in the driveway.
Unusual.
Andre was supposed to be at work.
Jordan entered quietly.
Voices came from the home office.
Andre and Rachel.
Jordan moved closer.
“I called the bank,” Rachel said.
Andre sounded surprised. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to know whether the house was collateral.”
“And?”
“It isn’t.”
Jordan closed his eyes in relief.
Rachel continued.
“But if they get a judgment against you personally, that can still become a problem.”
“I know.”
“Andre, there’s something else.”
Silence.
“I moved money.”
Jordan opened his eyes.
Andre asked, “What money?”
“Thirty-two thousand.”
“What?”
“The week after I saw the seventy-four-thousand-dollar transfer, I moved thirty-two thousand from the remaining emergency savings into an account in my name.”
Andre’s chair scraped.
“You did what?”
“I panicked.”
“So your answer to me moving money without telling you was moving money without telling me?”
“Yes.”
“Rachel.”
“I was scared you were going to put everything into the company.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You already put seventy-four thousand in.”
“That was different.”
“No. It felt different to you.”
Jordan leaned against the hallway wall.
Both his parents had lied.
Both claimed they had done it to protect the family.
Andre’s voice dropped.
“Were you planning to leave?”
Rachel did not answer immediately.
Jordan’s stomach twisted.
“No,” she finally said. “I was making sure Jordan and I could pay bills if the company collapsed.”
Andre went silent.
The phrase Jordan and I hung heavily.
Rachel heard it too.
“That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
“Andre—”
Jordan stepped away before he heard more.
He ran upstairs.
For the first time, losing the house did not seem like the worst possibility.
Losing the family did.
He opened his desk drawer.
The brass key waited there.
W-17.
Jordan stared at it.
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Then made a decision.
If the adults in his house were going to keep hiding things from one another, he would find out what they were hiding himself.
