The Lender
Chapter 05 - The Lender
The name Eleanor finally gave them was Victor Pryce, a man Nathan recognized only vaguely from the club's back rooms, someone he'd nodded to a handful of times over the years without ever knowing what he actually did.
"He runs private games," Eleanor said. "And lends against losses, at rates that seemed reasonable when I was desperate enough not to read the fine print carefully."
Claire, sitting at the kitchen table with a legal pad she'd started filling with notes the moment the word lender entered the conversation, looked up sharply.
"What rate," she asked.
"Twenty percent, compounding monthly," Eleanor said.
Claire did the math silently, feeling something cold settle in her stomach that had nothing to do with the tea stain still visible on the kitchen floor.
"That's not a private lender," she said. "That's loan sharking. That's illegal in this state, Eleanor, regardless of how politely it's dressed up at a country club."
"I didn't know what else to do," Eleanor said. "I couldn't go to a real bank with a gambling debt this size. I couldn't tell either of you. I thought I could manage it quietly, the way I'd been managing it for three years."
"Except you couldn't," Nathan said. "And instead of finally telling the truth when it stopped being manageable, you took it out of an envelope meant for your granddaughter's heart."
Eleanor had no response to that. She hadn't had a response to it since the study, not really, every explanation circling the same unavoidable center without ever quite landing on genuine accountability.
Claire pulled out her phone, opening a search for Victor Pryce's name alongside terms she hoped wouldn't return anything, though some part of her already suspected they would.
Three results down, a local news article from eighteen months earlier, a brief mention of a man by that name connected to an ongoing investigation into predatory lending operating out of several country clubs in the region, no charges filed yet, the investigation apparently still active.
"There's an open investigation," Claire said, turning the phone toward Nathan. "Into exactly this kind of lending. If we go to the police about tonight, about the theft, it might connect to something bigger than just our family's problem."
"I don't want to involve the police," Eleanor said quickly. "Please. If Victor finds out I've spoken to anyone official, it won't just be my problem anymore."
"It's already not just your problem," Nathan said. "It became our problem the moment you took Lily's surgery fund to solve it."
Claire watched the two of them, mother and son, caught in a specific, unfamiliar negotiation neither of them had ever needed to have before tonight, decades of a relationship built on Eleanor being the capable, put-together one now cracking open under a debt she'd hidden successfully for three years.
"I need to think," Claire said finally, standing, the ice pack finally set aside as the swelling in her cheek started to settle into something duller and more manageable. "Not about Victor Pryce tonight. About Lily's surgery, which is still happening in eleven days regardless of what any of us decide to do about your debt."
"The money's all recovered," Nathan said. "Every dollar is back in the safe."
May you like
"For now," Claire said. "Until Friday, when apparently a very dangerous man expects a payment that no longer exists because you gave it back to us instead."
The kitchen went quiet, the full shape of the problem finally visible to everyone in the room at the same time.
