The wedding surcharge was never going to the hotel’s audio vendors.

It was a down payment on his own commercial arrears.

He was using my son’s marriage to keep his business doors open.

I looked at the copy of the original one-hundred-eighty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check sitting under the lease file.

Douglas believed I was an ordinary retiree with modest savings.

He thought he had outsmarted me with a fake business merger proposal at the country club.

He expected me to sign over the venue equity out of fear of public embarrassment, or maybe a legal threat.