Chapter 17

After his mother hung up, Ethan stood in the quiet kitchen with his phone still in his hand. On the stone island beside him lay the legal notice Paul Vance had emailed over an hour earlier. Because Lauren had submitted Ethan's messages saying the eighteen thousand dollars wasn't a loan, Vance warned that the loan claim would be hard to sustain and advised him to drop it. The entire twenty-six thousand four hundred dollars would be deducted from Ethan's share of the proceeds when the house...