Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Golden Boy
David Vance’s words echoed in my head all the way back to the Highlands.
He’s drowning in debt.
It sounded impossible on the surface. Jason was an orthodontist. His practice in Littleton had sleek frosted glass windows, state-of-the-art 3D imaging machines, and a parking lot filled with late-model European sedans. Stephanie drove an eighty-thousand-dollar German SUV with leather seats and panoramic sunroofs. They took annual ski trips, wore designer ski gear, and lived in a four-bedroom house with an infinity lawn.
Or did they?
Sitting at my desk with a cup of black tea, I opened my laptop and began doing the kind of deep-dive research I usually reserved for competitor brand audits. As a content strategist, half my job is open-source intelligence—finding public filings, corporate registrations, property liens, and digital footprints that tell the real story behind a brand’s public claims.
I started with the Colorado Secretary of State business registry.
Mercer Orthodontics, LLC.
The corporate filings were current, but when I cross-referenced the corporate name with the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder’s public records search, the picture began to fracture.
In March of 2025, a commercial equipment leasing company had filed a UCC financing statement against his practice for an outstanding balance of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars on his imaging suite.
In August of 2025, a second lien was filed by a dental supply distributor for eighty-six thousand dollars.
Then I searched the property records for their Littleton home.
The house had been purchased in 2021 for eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In November of 2025—just two months ago—a second mortgage had been taken out on the property for one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
And then came the real shocker: my mother’s house.
Evelyn’s small, charming patio home in Centennial, the one she had purchased with the divorce settlement from my father seven years ago. The house she had claimed was her “secure nest egg.”
In September of 2026, my mother had signed a deed of trust, co-signing a personal loan for Jason in the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, using her equity in the home as collateral.
I stared at the county recorder’s PDF document, my mother’s sprawling, theatrical cursive signature sitting right above Jason’s sharp, aggressive scribble.
The dates lined up like falling dominoes.
In late October, the first repayment on that consolidated loan had come due. In November, Mom had started calling me every other day, complaining about how hard Jason was working, how exhausted Stephanie was, how expensive the children’s private preschool was.
Then came Thanksgiving. The constant hints: “Riley, you’re doing so well with your little internet business. You must be saving so much money working from that small apartment. Jason has so many overhead costs. It’s so unfair how medical professionals are taxed.”
Then came the demand for Christmas childcare.
It wasn't about giving Jason and Stephanie a romantic ski break in Vail. The Vail cabin rental hadn't even been paid for; Jason had likely put it on a maxed-out credit card hoping to project success to his in-laws, or maybe he’d planned to use the time to meet with an investor in Aspen.
And Mom wasn't just being an overbearing matriarch. She was Jason’s financial hostage. If his practice went under, her house went with it.
My phone rang. The screen displayed my father’s number again.
“Dad,” I answered immediately. “Did you know Jason co-signed a six-figure loan against Mom’s house three months ago?”
There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the line. When Dad finally spoke, his voice lacked its usual dry levity. It was weighed down by years of accumulated fatigue.
“I didn't know about the house, Riley,” he said quietly. “But I knew about the practice.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because every time I tried to warn you about how your mother and brother handled money, you defended them,” Dad replied, not with cruelty, but with brutal, inescapable truth. “You were twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, working yourself to the bone, sending your mother money for ‘roof repairs’ that magically coincided with Jason’s practice opening its second treatment room. You wanted to believe in the happy family unit, kiddo. I couldn't force you to see what you weren't ready to look at.”
I pressed my fingers against my temples, feeling the dull throb of a brewing headache. “Dad, he walked into Apex Design Studio today. Downtown. He tried to solicit a kickback from my biggest client. He told them I was having a mental breakdown.”
“What?” Dad’s voice cracked like thunder. The easygoing retiree in Scottsdale was instantly replaced by the trial attorney who had spent thirty years tearing apart corporate fraudsters in federal court. “Did you record it? Are there witnesses?”
“The partners, David Vance and Elena Morales, were in the room. David threw him out and threatened him with tortious interference. But Dad, he tried to rob me. In broad daylight. In front of my clients.”
“That’s not just tortious interference, Riley. That’s commercial extortion under Colorado Revised Statutes,” Dad said, his legal instincts firing at full speed. “Tomorrow morning is your protection order hearing, right?”
“Yes. Eight-thirty AM at the Douglas County Courthouse in Castle Rock.”
“Good,” Dad said. “I’m booking a flight right now. I’ll be on the tarmac in Denver by seven tonight.”
May you like
“Dad, you don't have to fly up here in the middle of winter—”
“Riley, stop,” he commanded gently. “For seven years, I let you fight your mother’s battles alone because I was too tired of her drama to stay in the ring. That was my failure as a father. I walked away from the house, but I left you behind to be the shock absorber. I’m not letting you walk into that courtroom alone with those two predators. I’ll meet you at the courthouse steps at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.”