The same quarrelsome partner asked, “How much did we lose?”
Despite the interrupted night, the strain, the man’s age, Aaron went through an instantaneous transformation. “Shame on you. You heartless oaf. You lostnothing!”
“I just meant—”
Aaron seemed to grow in size, and in that moment Colin saw the man who dominated courtrooms with his power. “Oh, we all know fully well what youmeant.” He pointed to where Colin sat. “Now get down on your knees, crawl to that young man, and beg forgiveness for all the trouble you have given him and all the rest of us.”
“It was his investment—”
“Exactly! His investments have brought us one immense return after another!” Aaron stabbed the air between them. “Apologize to him. Then slink into your office and check your records. See just how much you made off the back of this young man. Then come back and apologize again!”
The gathering broke up then. Colin accepted a few handshakes, though most refused to meet his eye. Mira embraced him. He felt almost nothing.
When the room cleared, Colin followed Aaron and Ethan into the older man’s office and said, “I want to close the fund.”
CHAPTER32
Through the days that followed, each event felt like another nail hammered into Colin’s previous ambitions. He became redrawn at some visceral level. So many friends and strangers misplacing their confidence in him. Because he had this gift. And he had entered into the entire process trusting as blindly as they had. Why? Because he was still a child.
Four days after they pulled out, their target company declared bankruptcy.
The following day, when Aaron was able to search beyond the official court records, they learned the group had a second legal representative. Not the one named in the court proceedings. Another one. Hidden by way of representing the company president, and not the corporation itself.
Grey Robinson.
Three days later, on a Monday, Roland and Aaron insisted on taking Colin downtown to the City Club for lunch. Colin had managed to sleep uninterrupted through the previous night, a first since discovering the deception. This was his fourth visit to the place, twice before withRoland and once with Aaron. He had almost become accustomed to people staring, to comments following him across the room. Only today he added a mental echo of his own to the whispers. Saying how he should have seen this coming.
After ordering, Aaron started in on plans to lodge criminal complaints against Lucretia. He was in the middle of explaining the difficulties involved, because the lady remained in her home country of Venezuela and the extradition treaty was a mess, when Colin broke in with, “I don’t want to talk about that.”
Aaron settled back, his head only a few inches higher than Colin’s when seated. “Very well.”
“I don’t want to know anything more about that. Ever.”
Roland asked, “You would prefer we not press charges?”
“She broke the law,” Aaron pointed out. “A number of them.”
He had wrestled over that. “What you do as lawyers is your business.”
Aaron asked, “Will you testify? That is, assuming we can formulate the case.”
He nodded, not so much in agreement as in confirmation that he had thought about this as well. “I was a part of this from the beginning. Just like her. If you call on me, I will testify.”
Aaron waited as the meals were placed before them and Colin’s iced tea was replenished. “Going after Grey Robinson is next to impossible.”
“No matter how guilty he might be,” Roland agreed.
“His fingerprints are all over this matter,” Aaron went on. “But proving this in a court of law will be difficult in the extreme.”
“He will have covered his tracks,” Roland said.
Colin used his fork to clear the air between them. “Let’s eat.”
The food was excellent, and he was famished. He had not finished a meal in over a week. Afterward he lined hisutensils on the empty plate and said, “Grey Robinson wasn’t behind this.”
Roland’s protest was so mild, Colin had the sense he was approaching the same conclusion. “You can’t know anything for certain.”
“I don’t need evidence. I know. It’s that simple.”
