His Settlement Offer Asked Me To Erase The Missing Royalties

Curtis offered me $12,000, the apartment furniture, and the chance to end things quietly.

In exchange, I would transfer my map rights, release both companies, and state that all past royalties had been paid.

Maya laid the offer between us.

"You don't have to answer today."

"I can answer that part today. No."

She nodded and made a note.

The meeting room had no window. Someone had left a bowl of wrapped peppermints on the table. I unwrapped one just to give my hands a job.

"Can he move the house?" I asked.

"He can try to sell it. We need an order protecting the money we're tracing. Asking for one takes evidence."

We had the deed, the distributor's records, and a false statement about a company going under. We did not yet have the path into the house.

Maya filed the license suit against Curtis and both companies. It asked the court to confirm my ownership, enforce the audit, and award the unpaid money. She kept the divorce disclosures moving too.

"Any payment you recover has to be handled properly in the divorce," she reminded me. "Ownership of a copyright doesn't decide every question about income during a marriage."

"I want the numbers counted once," I said. "I want them counted honestly."

We asked for bank statements, customer contracts, and the home closing file through the court process. Maya arranged the requests. I did not have to call a bank and pretend I had permission.

Meanwhile, I worked.

A small rescue group paid me $640 to redraw a creek crossing. I spent a morning checking the narrow place where a slide could pile against a culvert. For four hours, the problem on my desk had a scale and a north arrow.

Then my phone rang.

"I see you've sued your own family," Curtis said.

"You filed for divorce at my workshop."

"Because you wouldn't listen at home."

I could not remember a talk at home in which he had asked me to leave him or sell him my work.

"Please speak through Maya."

"I'm trying to save you fees. Tessa says you'll spend your whole claim on experts."

"Send the records, and the audit gets shorter."

He made a sound I knew well. It meant he thought I had embarrassed myself.

"There's a paid-in-full receipt, Parisa. You took a buyout years ago. Find that before you get brave."

After he hung up, I opened my old billing folders.

There it was: $3,600, paid in full, six years earlier.

For half a minute, my stomach hurt.

Then I read the line above the amount.

PRINT PREPARATION AND REVISED LABELS, PLATES 4 THROUGH 9.

I had charged a flat fee to make files ready for a new printing process. The signed work order said the underlying license stayed in force.

The receipt was real. His description of it was not.

I sent both pages to Maya, then called Leila.

"I hate how fast I believed him."

"You checked," she said.

"After I got scared."

"Checking still worked."

A week later, Curtis's lawyer filed a response. It described my drawings as work created for the business. It attached the receipt without its work order.

Maya submitted the complete pair.

I had thought revenge would feel like a speech. So far, it felt like finding the second page.

The bank records began arriving in batches. Leila asked me not to sit beside her for every line.

"You have maps to draw. Let me do this job."

She called on Thursday afternoon.

"I can trace the earnest money," she said. "Come over."

Her desk held three statements, each with a different account name.

Granite Lantern had paid Bell Field Safety $81,000 early that spring. Two days later, Curtis had transferred $24,300 from that account to Tessa. Tessa had sent the same amount to the home title company the next morning.

"That's the deposit?"

"The closing file confirms it. The purchase price was $486,000. Their total down payment was $97,200. Costs added $8,400."

"And the rest?"

She put down a fourth page.

Bell Ridge had wired $81,300 directly to the title company for the final cash needed at closing.

The two wires added to $105,600.

I read the account names again. The map money had not vanished in some great business failure. Part of it had bought their front door.

"Does this mean all of it was mine?" I asked.

"No," Leila said. "His business had expenses and a share of each sale. We'll trace the transfers, then calculate your unpaid share. Those are two separate columns."

I pulled my chair closer. I wanted to understand every column before I walked into court.

Maya joined us carrying her laptop.

"We have a hearing date," she said. "And his lawyer has just challenged your signed original."