Part 3Ex-Wife Mocked Me for Being a Mechanic, I Crashed Her Stock

The man in the suit crossed quickly to David and dipped his head in greeting.

"Mr. Ashford, Ms. Lane, my apologies. Traffic was bad."

David waved a hand, clearly impatient.

"Is the paperwork ready?"

The lawyer opened his black briefcase and drew out a neatly bound document.

He turned to me and held it out.

"Mr. Carter, I'm Ms. Lane's private attorney. Regarding the property in the old district whose disposition was left unresolved when you divorced two years ago, Ms. Lane now requires you to sign this waiver of ownership."

The cover page read Transfer of Jointly Held Interest in bold type.

Sarah folded her arms, chin lifted.

"You can barely afford to keep fixing cars anyway. That dump sitting in your name is a waste.

"In that neighborhood, you can't even cover the annual maintenance fees, can you?"

David pulled a checkbook from his expensive suit, uncapped a pen, and scrawled a number across it.

"Sign right now and I'll throw in six thousand dollars on top. You can buy yourself a new set of wrenches, or pay off that fine."

I looked at the check without lifting a hand.

"That property is legally mine. I'm not signing."

The lawyer pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose, his tone carrying a practiced edge of intimidation.

"Mr. Carter, I'd like you to be realistic. If you refuse to sign, we'll proceed with litigation without your cooperation."

He drew a draft complaint out of the briefcase.

"A drawn-out legal process means heavy attorney fees, appraisal fees, and other procedural costs. Given your financial situation, I doubt you can afford them."

An old man watching from the side sighed and tried to talk sense into me.

"Just sign it. You can't fight rich people and their lawyers. Take the six thousand and go. It beats walking away with nothing."

David had no interest in what any bystander thought. He was staring at the trading screen on his phone.

"No time to drag this out. The bid keeps building."

David looked up, greed shining in his eyes. "I'm using every bit of intraday buying power left in the account!"

His fingers flew across the screen and pulled up the margin trading page.

I stared at the phone in his hand and snorted. "Pour everything you own into a hole that deep and you'll regret it."

David looked like he had just heard the joke of the century.

"Regret? You've scraped by at subsistence level your whole life. You think you're qualified to tell me how to do anything?"

With that, he put up every asset he could as collateral and pushed the platform's approved intraday buying power to its limit.

A high-risk confirmation warning popped up.

He tapped confirm without hesitating.

The status on the screen changed to Filled.

The remaining buying power in his account fell to nearly zero, and his margin usage maxed out on the spot.