I came home after five years and my sister pointed at my shoulder and asked if that was my rank. It was a unit patch.

By Thursday morning, the fallout had expanded exponentially.

The forensic accounting team hired by Marcus Vance set up camp in an office building in downtown Denver. What they found in less than forty-eight hours made my father’s legal troubles ten times worse.

It wasn't just the $180,000 he had taken from my grandmother’s accounts. Over the past four years, Richard Sterling’s development firm—Sterling Realty Group—had been bleeding cash due to failed commercial investments along the Front Range. To keep his company afloat and maintain the illusion of high-society wealth, he had been using my grandmother’s estate as a personal piggy bank.

He had mortgaged two commercial lots owned by the estate, funneled the cash into his own firm, and was relying on the transfer of the $4.2 million Bear Creek property to secure a massive bridge loan from a private equity firm in Dallas.

Without the Bear Creek title, the private equity loan vanished. And without the loan, Sterling Realty Group was completely insolvent.

I sat in Marcus Vance’s corner office, sipping black coffee, while Marcus reviewed the audit preliminary summary.

"It’s bad, Sloane," Marcus said, laying down a spreadsheet filled with red numbers. "Your father owes over two point eight million dollars to short-term creditors. If he can't produce title to Bear Creek by next Friday, his lenders are going to initiate foreclosure proceedings on his personal house—the one with the lemon-polished floors."

I looked out the window at the snow dusting the tops of the Denver skyscrapers. "What about the notary?"

"The notary public who stamped that blank quitclaim deed? She panicked the moment she got a summons from the district attorney," Marcus said with a dark smile. "She gave a full statement confirming that your father instructed her to pre-stamp blank transfer forms on multiple occasions. The District Attorney's office is opening a formal criminal investigation for forgery and fraud."

My phone buzzed on the desk. It was a text message from Brad.

Sloane, it’s Brad. Can we talk privately? Away from Tiffany and your parents. Please.

I looked at the text, then showed my screen to Marcus.

Marcus chuckled softly. "The First Lieutenant is looking for an exit strategy. The ship is sinking, and he’s realized he hitched his wagon to a family that’s about to lose everything."