Marcus didn't flinch at the accusation. He slowly pulled a second folder from his battered leather bag—this one bound with faded red string—and untied the knot with steady, calloused fingers.
"The account didn't run dry, Arthur," Marcus said, his tone calm and even. "The commercial lease on the lower two acres down by the canyon road brought in forty-two hundred dollars a month from the nursery wholesalers. Under the 1998 agreement, that lease revenue went straight into your firm's escrow account specifically to cover the annual property tax assessment."
He laid eleven yellow carbon-copy receipts side by side across the glass table, right next to the 1998 deed. Each one bore the stamped header of Vance & Sterling’s client trust division, dated between 2005 and 2015.
"Forty-two hundred a month is over fifty thousand dollars a year," Marcus continued, looking straight at Keaton and the two other wealthy couples still lingering by the curved staircase. "The property taxes on my father’s orchard were under nine thousand a year under Proposition 13. The money was sitting in Arthur’s bank account the entire time."
Keaton leaned down, adjusting his silver-rimmed reading glasses as he examined the yellow receipts without touching them. "These are stamped received by your Wilshire accounting desk, Arthur. And the account balances are listed right here at the bottom. Look at 2015—there’s over a hundred and eighty thousand dollars sitting in reserve."
"Those are interim statements!" Arthur barked, his voice cracking as he took a step backward toward the hallway. "There were maintenance assessments! Slope stabilization fees required by the city! Everything was accounted for when the parcel went into default. Look, this is neither the time nor the place for an accounting audit. The open house is officially closed! Everyone, please, my staff will reach out to your representatives on Monday morning."
Keaton straightened up, buttoning his bespoke gray suit jacket with a look of cold disgust. "Don't bother calling my office on Monday, Arthur. I don't touch dirt with a clouded title, and I certainly don't do business with escrow brokers who let their own clients default while holding six figures of their money."
Keaton nodded once—not to Arthur, but to Marcus. "Good luck to you, sir."
"Thank you," Marcus said quietly.
As Keaton and his wife walked briskly out the massive front doors, the remaining two couples quickly set their untouched champagne flutes down on a marble console and followed them out into the California sunlight. Within thirty seconds, the twenty-million-dollar showcase was empty of buyers.
Chloe stood frozen near the staircase, watching six hundred thousand dollars in commission walk down the driveway. Her chest heaved beneath her pearl-white blazer. The haughty confidence she had worn ten minutes ago was completely gone, replaced by a frantic, cornered desperation.
She spun on her ruby-red heels and glared at Arthur, who had retreated twenty feet down the hallway, pressing his phone to his ear and whispering furiously to someone on the other end. Seeing her boss occupied, Chloe marched straight back to the coffee table where Marcus was calmly organizing his yellow receipts.
"Do you have any idea what you just did?" she hissed, dropping her voice so it wouldn't carry down the hallway to Arthur. "I put my entire savings into staging this property. Private catering, architectural digest spreads, custom Italian furniture rentals! You just scared off a nineteen-million-dollar cash buyer over some dusty lemon trees that were bulldozed ten years ago!"
Marcus looked up at her, his deep brown eyes steady and unbothered. "They were Meyer lemons, ma'am. And my father spent forty years grafting those trees by hand after he came back from Korea."
"I don't care about your father's trees!" Chloe snapped, her manicured hands clenching into fists. Then, glancing nervously over her shoulder to make sure Arthur still had his back turned in the hallway, she reached into her designer handbag and pulled out a slim leather checkbook and a gold pen.
"Listen to me," she whispered rapidly, leaning across the glass table. "You're seventy years old. Look at your jacket. Look at your shoes. If you try to fight Vance & Sterling in civil court, Arthur's attorneys will bury you in motions until you're ninety. You won't see a dime before you die."
Marcus watched her uncapping the gold pen. He didn't say a word.