“She always knows,” he replies quietly. “She checks on me even when I tell her not to.”
“And she offered to resolve the debt?”
He nods.
“She told me she found a way. Said she met someone who could fix it.”
His throat tightens as he speaks.
“She gave them five thousand and then told me to stop answering their calls.”
“And you complied?”
“Yeah.”
He glances again toward Karp, then back to me.
“You’re making it sound worse than it is.” His uninjured hand curls into a fist against his thigh.
I lean back in the chair, folding my hands loosely in front of me.
“It’s worse than you think.”
His back teeth grind as he holds my gaze.
“Why?” he asks. “Who are you?”
“I review structural problems. Your debt is one of them.”
He studies me more closely now, trying to place my tone rather than my title.
“When did you last speak with your sister?”
“Three days ago,” he answers. “She sounded stressed. I asked if it was about me. She told me not to make everything about myself.” His mouth twitches faintly, almost a smile, but it falters quickly. “She said it was handled.”
“And the man she met?”
He hesitates.
“She said he was serious,” he replies. “That he cared about her.”
Serious.I make a mental note of it.
“You never met him?”
“No.”
“Did she describe him?”
“She said he was confident,” Jonathan answers slowly, recalling. “That he had connections.”
Connections.
He believes this is still a romance layered over financial relief.
“And you believed this man could eliminate sixty-two thousand dollars without consequence?”
He looks down at his hands.
