“There is something else,” Vivien said, pulling out another document. “I had my attorney do some digging this afternoon. Your father invested heavily in a company called Nexus Biotech about three years ago. Do you know anything about that?”
I shook my head.
“I have never heard of it.”
“It is a pharmaceutical startup. One of his clients turned business partner. Your father put in $400,000 of trust fund money. The company went under last year. Total loss. $400,000 gone. Evaporated.”
The number was so large I could barely comprehend it. That was almost ten years of the salary I was hoping to make in my first job. That was a house—multiple houses in some parts of the country. That was freedom and choices and opportunities. All sacrificed to my father’s ego and poor judgment.
“What else?” I asked, my voice hollow.
“Another $300,000 went into a real estate flip that your mother orchestrated with some friends. They bought a property at auction, planned to renovate and sell at a profit. Except they underestimated the costs, overestimated the market, and ended up selling at a loss. Then there was the restaurant investment, the cryptocurrency speculation, the medical device company that turned out to be a fraud.”
She kept listing failures, each one representing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of my money, my future, my life. I felt numb, disconnected from my own body, as if I were watching this happen to someone else.
“The worst part,” my grandmother continued, “is that they never consulted professionals. They never talked to financial advisers or attorneys or anyone who might have told them these were terrible ideas. They just threw your money at anything that promised quick returns, living high on your dime while it lasted.”
“How much is left?” I asked. “In total, how much of the original $3 million is still accessible?”
Vivien met my eyes, and I saw genuine pain there.
“Based on what we can determine so far, about $230,000. Maybe less, depending on what other surprises we uncover.”
$230,000 out of $3 million. They had blown through nearly $3 million in four years. The sheer scale of the waste, the stupidity, the selfishness of it made me want to scream. Instead, I just sat there staring at the paperwork, trying to make sense of numbers that refused to add up to anything but betrayal.
“I want to file suit tomorrow,” I said finally. “I want to freeze whatever assets they have left. I want to make sure they cannot spend another dollar of my money.”
“Already in motion,” my grandmother said. “My attorney is drafting the paperwork tonight. We file first thing in the morning. But, Maggie, you need to understand what this means. Your parents will fight back. They will try to justify what they did. Will claim they were acting in your best interest. They will make you out to be ungrateful, selfish, cruel. Are you prepared for that?”
I thought about the student loans in my name, the debt I would be carrying for years because they had chosen to spend my trust fund instead of using it for its intended purpose. I thought about the sacrifices I had made, the opportunities I had passed up, the stress and anxiety of trying to make ends meet while they lived comfortably on money that should have been mine.
