Chapter 8 - Jessica Knew More Than She Pretended
Jessica’s involvement looked superficial at first.
Cruel girlfriend.
Expensive dress.
Cheap insult.
Then Northstar’s document review found her name.
Not in Brendan’s corporate debt.
In correspondence surrounding the villa.
Three weeks before closing, Jessica emailed Brendan’s private property manager asking whether Northstar could be prevented from inspecting “our residence.”
The manager answered that the lender’s contractual inspection rights could not be blocked.
Jessica replied:
Then move anything they could use against Brendan before they arrive.
That was not automatically criminal.
But it mattered.
Several decorative pieces listed on the villa entity’s insured inventory had been moved off-site.
So had two paintings.
When Northstar asked where they were, Brendan’s staff claimed they had been temporarily sent for conservation.
No conservation company had them.
Jessica’s storage unit did.
Now the shattered glass cabinet beside Brendan took on another significance.
Half the pieces displayed inside belonged personally to Diane.
The other half were listed as assets of the villa entity.
Jessica had been helping blur the distinction between family possessions and collateral.
She did not understand the debt structure.
But she understood enough to know people were coming to inventory things.
And she wanted them gone first.
When she called me “trash,” she thought she was defending the lifestyle she had just entered.
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She had no idea how unstable that lifestyle already was.
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