Chapter 7 - DEAN SHAW’S DEAL
Dean’s plan had been clever enough to be dangerous and stupid enough to fail.
He created Northline Redevelopment LLC.
Northline offered to purchase Riverside through a transaction packaged as an internal portfolio restructuring.
Price:
$11.8 million.
Less than half its clean-market value.
The justification?
Potential environmental exposure.
Except the Carter family trust could not sell without Lily’s consent.
So Monica’s side produced it.
Forged.
Once Northline controlled Riverside, Dean planned to disclose contamination during refinancing.
The property’s value would collapse temporarily.
He would seek cleanup grants, tax benefits, and restructuring concessions.
Then hold the land until remediation and nearby highway expansion increased value again.
He expected eventually to make more than $15 million.
What he had not expected?
Lily reading attachments.
My sister was supposed to sign routine annual trust documents.
Instead she opened every exhibit.
On page 84, she saw her own “signature.”
Attached to a consent she had never executed.
That was how everything began.
Not intuition.
Not a mysterious phone call.
Reading.
I laughed when she told me.
“What?”
She smiled weakly.
“You used to make fun of me for reading terms and conditions.”
“You read software licenses.”
“Someone should.”
“Psychopath.”
“Alive psychopath.”
That silenced me.
Then she laughed.
Good.
May you like
I had missed that sound.
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