Chapter 7 - THE TIPPING POINT OF GREED
By Wednesday afternoon, the walls were closing in on Gregory and Cynthia Mullins. Stripped of her position at Sterling, Vance & Montgomery, Cynthia was holed up in their multimillion-dollar condominium in Marina District, surrounded by half-packed designer suitcases, legal textbooks, and shredded documents.
Gregory burst through the front door, his tie undone, looking like a man on the brink of complete psychological collapse.
“The Medical Licensing Board just served me with an official inquiry notice!” Gregory yelled, kicking a leather ottoman across the hardwood floor. “They’re auditing every single billing record from the Sutter Street clinic over the last thirty-six months! How did they get those files, Cynthia? You told me our offshore accounts were untouchable!”
Cynthia whipped around, her eyes bloodshot, clutching a bottle of expensive gin. “Lacey holds the master lease on the medical building! Under the commercial lease covenants we signed, the landlord has emergency audit privileges if there is suspected financial fraud on the premises! You signed that lease, Gregory! You were so eager to have the penthouse suite that you didn't even read the indemnification clauses!”
“Don't you dare blame this on me!” Gregory shouted back, stepping aggressively toward his wife. “You were the legal mastermind! You told me Joshua was too senile to ever check his medical trust statements! You told me Keaton was too stupid to understand forensic accounting! Now my medical license is on the line, my clinic is locked down, and Karla has been kicked out of the Broadway mansion!”
Right on cue, the condominium’s front door opened, and Karla walked in, dragging two oversized Louis Vuitton suitcases behind her. Her makeup was smeared, her hair disheveled, looking nothing like the untouchable high-society queen who had ruled Pacific Heights for half a century.
“Gregory! Cynthia! You must do something!” Karla wailed, collapsing onto the sofa. “Joshua’s lawyers changed the locks on the mansion! They wouldn't even let me take the sterling silver tea set! They told me I could only take my clothes! The neighbors were standing on their balconies filming me on their smartphones! Me! Karla Mullins, being escorted off my own property by armed deputies!”
“Shut up, Mother!” Gregory snapped, rubbing his temples in agony. “We have much bigger problems than your silver tea set! We are facing federal prison time if Lacey hands these audit files to the Department of Justice!”
Karla sat bolt upright, her eyes flashing with a sudden, vicious madness. “Then we destroy her! We go to that ridiculous farmers market! We make a public scene! We tell the press she’s abusing an eighty-year-old man, keeping Joshua hostage in Napa Valley, and using stolen money to extort us! The media loves a scandal! If we ruin her reputation, she’ll be forced to settle!”
Cynthia stared at her mother-in-law for a long moment, the alcohol and desperation clouding her judgment until Karla’s deranged plan actually sounded like a viable strategy.
“Karla is right about one thing,” Cynthia whispered, a dark, dangerous smile creeping across her lips. “Lacey has spent twelve years hiding behind the image of an innocent, humble market woman. She cares about what the public thinks of her stall and her family name. If we bring television cameras, local reporters, and our social media followers to the Bayview Farmers Market tomorrow morning, we can corner her publicly. We force Keaton and Lacey to hand over Joshua’s power of attorney right there in front of the world, or we brand her as a greedy, elder-abusing fraud.”
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Gregory hesitated, the last remnants of his medical ethics screaming at him that this was suicide. “And if it backfires?”
“It won't,” Cynthia sneered coldly, pouring herself another glass. “Because tomorrow morning, we show the world who the real Mullins family is.”
