She met with a forensic accountant named Douglas Price, a meticulous man with wire-rim glasses and a legal pad packed with notes. He had a reputation for finding money that people worked very hard to hide. Paige brought him everything: screenshots, bank statements, copies of the forged transfers, the amendment filing, the divorce draft. Douglas reviewed it in silence, flipping pages with the same calm you’d use for a cookbook, then looked up and said, “This is clean enough to take to a judge tomorrow. They didn’t even try to cover their tracks.”
She met with a business attorney named Sharon Whitmore, a woman who’d spent twenty years handling ownership disputes and corporate fraud. Sharon pulled the original incorporation records from the county archive: Paige’s name, Paige’s signature, Paige’s $400 startup deposit, stamped and dated. Every subsequent document filed by Wendell and Rochelle was either forged or fraudulently authorized. Sharon leaned back and said, “You own that company. You always did. And we can prove it in any room you choose.”
Paige chose the room carefully.
The Hands of Grace gala was five weeks away. Paige’s Table was already listed as the main sponsor. The event would pull three hundred witnesses into one space—donors, pastors, business owners, community leaders, people who’d ever shaken Wendell’s hand and believed his version of reality. Wendell would be there because Wendell always showed up when there was an audience. And he would bring Rochelle because he’d stopped pretending months ago.
Three weeks before the gala, Paige called the event coordinator, reviewed the guest list, confirmed the seating chart, and personally added one name to the VIP section: Geneva Louise Carter.
Meanwhile, Wendell moved with the swagger of a man convinced the hardest part was over. He told his barber the divorce would be painless. He told Rochelle the ownership transition was basically done. He joked at the gym that Paige wouldn’t even know how to hire a lawyer. He bought a watch he couldn’t afford and charged it to a company account that was never his.
Rochelle matched him stride for stride. She had already started redecorating Paige’s office at company headquarters. She removed Paige’s framed recipes from the walls—the same recipes that had built the business from a kitchen table to a six-figure operation—and replaced them with photos of herself at events. She changed the lock on the supply closet and told staff, smiling, that she was co-owner now. She ordered new business cards with her name printed beneath the company logo. She moved Paige’s favorite mug—the one Ayana had painted for Mother’s Day—from the desk to a breakroom shelf and replaced it with her own.
One afternoon Rochelle sat in Paige’s chair, feet on the desk, snapped a photo, and posted it with the caption: New chapter.
Paige saw it that night in bed. She stared at it a long time, then locked her phone and closed her eyes.
She didn’t need to react. The gala was twelve days away.
