Gideon Admitted Using My Signature Without Ever Asking Me

I read the email at Anika's office, with both feet flat on the floor.

Mai had written it to Gideon three days before she brought me the divorce papers.

Seng won't sign a transfer if he sees the full catalog price. Use the approval attached. We can settle his share afterward.

Gideon's reply sat below it.

That signature is from the MX change. Is he going to dispute it?

Mai had answered seven minutes later.

He doesn't see the payment files. Keep the closing packet with me.

I looked up.

"They were talking about me while I was downstairs working."

Anika waited.

That morning came back to me. I had carried coffee upstairs. Gideon had thanked me, then asked whether a cut pile could hide a stain.

I had spent ten minutes explaining the nap.

"Does this prove everything?" I asked.

"It proves an important part. We'll authenticate the files and question them. We still need a record the court can rely on."

The document examiner finished her work after receiving the original escrow instruction and the produced electronic files. She compared the disputed signatures with several genuine samples from before the trouble began.

Her report explained the differences in strokes and spacing. It also found the same signature image on the transfer request and the pickup release.

She did not claim to know who had held a pen based on a feeling. Her limits were printed beside her findings.

Felix liked that.

"A good report tells you what it can't say," he told me.

He finished his own report that week. Each deposit linked to an escrow statement. Each withdrawal linked to a bank entry. Each total could be checked without trusting his word.

For the first time, his desk bothered me less.

Ellen also sent the escrow firm's review. Its staff had accepted the scanned change packet without getting the separate confirmation required by our instruction. The firm preserved its records and kept all new payments on hold. It proposed a fresh approval process once the dispute ended.

I forwarded the letter to Anika rather than agreeing myself. The manufacturers still owed payments under valid licenses. Those contracts had not vanished because two people had lied. I wanted every customer told where to pay, when the court allowed it, without losing another dollar between one desk and the next.

At Gideon's deposition, a court reporter set a small machine on the table. Gideon's lawyer reminded him to answer aloud.

"Did Mr. Lor authorize you to sign his name?" Anika asked.

"Mai handled that side."

"Did he authorize you?"

"Not directly."

"Did you ask him?"

"No."

She showed him the email.

He took a long drink of water.

"I thought she had authority."

"You asked whether he would dispute the signature. Why?"

His lawyer requested a break.

I sat in the hall beside a vending machine that hummed louder than our old walking-foot machine. I wanted to go back inside and tell Gideon what those months had cost me.

Instead, I checked an order sketch on my phone. A customer wanted a plaid matched around a curved chair back. There was still work I knew how to do.

When the deposition resumed, Gideon admitted that his office had prepared the transfer request and the pickup release using the signature image Mai supplied.

He had never spoken to me about either approval.

He also confirmed the $50,000 purchase reserve and the $34,000 fee. The whole $84,000 remained in Vale Room's account, pending the disputed sale.

Anika asked why the studio had received no invoice for the fee.

"It was arranged with Mai."

"Was it approved by both company members?"

"No."

That answer was one short word. The reporter recorded it like any other.

Afterward, his lawyer asked whether we would accept the full $84,000 into the restricted account while the claims were resolved.

"With no release of claims just for moving the money," Anika said.

They agreed in writing.

Three business days later, Felix confirmed the wire. The recovered balance was now $293,880.

I laid my ruler across the report. No gap remained in the sum.

But there was still a gap in the truth.

Mai had not admitted signing the first change form. Her sworn explanation still called the hidden account an ordinary business tool.

Anika sent the relevant records to investigators through a formal complaint, with my statement that I had given neither person permission to sign for me. She also sent the escrow firm the examiner's findings.

"A referral doesn't promise charges," she said.

"I know."

That night I was folding my clean work shirts at Tou's when my phone rang.

The caller gave her name and said she was an investigator following up on the forged royalty instructions.

"Mr. Lor, can you bring the original blue binder tomorrow?"