“Simone,” she said, when I explained. “Let me make sure I understand. You hold the note on his business. Secured. With a personal guarantee. And he just told you to move out and announced he’s moving his girlfriend into a house you have a lien against.”
“That’s right.”
“And he doesn’t know you own the note.”
“He thinks I gave the bank a gift.”
Ruth was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “In fifteen years, I have never had a client walk in holding this much leverage and this little idea that she’s holding it. Simone. You didn’t just protect yourself. You put yourself in a position where you decide what happens to that man’s entire business.
Do you understand that?”
“I’m starting to.”
The second call was to my own accountant, to pull every document — the note purchase, the security agreements, the personal guarantee, four years of payment records proving the transfer, and the current standing of Desmond’s company, which I knew better than he did, because reading distressed companies is literally my job.
And what those documents showed was this:
Desmond’s company was still in trouble.
Paying down the bank hadn’t fixed the underlying business. He’d been treating my payments as breathing room and spending accordingly — the new car I’d wondered about, the “business trips” I now understood were with Alexis, a lifestyle propped up by the exact debt relief I’d been providing.
He was over-leveraged, under-managed, and the only reason his company was still standing was that his creditor — me — had been patient.
