“Pages.”
He nodded. “Again.”
Ten minutes later, I was in his office with a paper towel in my hand and a mug of tea cooling between us. I told him everything. The birthday dinner. The trust. The taxes. The video. The scholarship email. The safe.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he tapped a pencil once against his desk pad.
“Emily,” he said, “emotion will not correct a false record. Data will.”
I wiped my face.
“If your father has been hiding weakness inside the business, there will be a trail. Public records. payment ledgers. tax filings. corporate registrations. You are studying systems. Treat this like one.”
That sentence steadied me more than comfort could have.
I went to the basement computer lab in the economics building and started digging.
The lab smelled like warm electronics and vending machine coffee. I pulled the property index number for the dispatch yard, then the county tax history, then the business records attached to upcoming tax sale bidders. My grandfather’s tax payments had been early every year. After his death, they stopped completely.
But other bills had been paid.
Utilities. insurance. fuel. vehicle leases tied to Matteo and Sophia. My father had chosen which obligations to keep alive and which to starve.
Then I found a new company registered two months earlier: Southside Industrial Acquisitions.
Generic name. No operating history. Registered agent: Vincent Rossi.
I knew the name. Vincent owned an auto body shop near the dispatch yard and spent Friday nights at the same tavern as my father. He was not a major investor. He was not a real estate firm. He was a convenient friend.
The plan became visible line by line.
If the taxes remained unpaid, the county would sell the tax claim. Southside Industrial Acquisitions could buy it. If the trust failed to redeem the property in time, Vincent could petition for the deed and quietly move control back toward my father. The trust would own a company without its land.
I leaned back in the hard plastic chair and felt the last soft part of my childhood burn away.
My father had not simply mismanaged the company. He had built a trap around the one asset my grandfather meant to protect.
I called Gallagher.
He answered on the second ring, and before I could explain, he said, “Emily, listen carefully. Your father filed an emergency petition this morning.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“He is claiming Alejandro lacked capacity when he created the trust,” Gallagher continued. “He wants the court to freeze the transition until a full hearing.”
“How long?”
“Months, unless we can move faster.”
The tax deadline was less than three months away.
If the trust was frozen, I could not borrow against the yard. I could not sell a portion. I could not leverage anything. Dad did not need to win his claim. He only needed to delay me long enough for the property to slip into the sale.
It was efficient.
Cruel, but efficient.
For the first time, I understood that defending myself would not be enough. I needed to change the timing.
So I gave my father the one thing he wanted most.
The illusion that I had given up.
I sent an email from my old Lopez Freight student intern account to Gallagher’s public office address, knowing company messages were still forwarded through the administrative mailbox my father monitored. I wrote like a frightened daughter with no money, no strength, and no fight left.
I cannot handle court.
Prepare the papers.
Tell Hector I will step aside.
Five minutes later, Gallagher called, furious.
I let him talk for ten seconds, then said, “It was bait.”
Silence.
I explained the forwarding rule. I explained that my father needed to believe he had broken me. I needed him to stop spending money on filings, stop watching me, stop pushing the timeline.
Gallagher exhaled slowly. “Your grandfather would have enjoyed your nerve.”
“I need ninety days.”
“No,” he said. “You need less than that. Your father will get restless.”
He was right.