“We are looking at the filing now,” Marcus said. “Your mother’s broker did something highly unusual with the escrow terms.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a new wave of dread washing over me.

“She tied the wire to a short-term liquidity covenant we signed with our primary lender last week,” Marcus said.

I stopped walking.

The wind blew a dry leaf across my shoe, the scraping sound loud in the quiet afternoon.

“How did she even get her hands on that covenant?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Marcus said. “But the way the escrow is structured, if you reject her funds right now, it triggers an automatic technical default on our bridge loan.”

The phone felt heavy in my hand.

“She wouldn’t do that,” I said, though as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren’t true.

“She might not know she’s doing it,” Derek said on the line. “Or her broker did it to force our compliance.”

“Either way,” Marcus said, “if you click ‘Reject’ on that portal, our primary lender has the right to freeze our operating accounts by tomorrow morning.”