Chapter 5 - The Master Attorney’s Debt
At 8:30 AM on Monday morning, Alexander and I walked into the corner office on the forty-second floor of the Sterling & Partners building downtown.
The floor was covered in plush navy carpet, floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooked the river, and the smell of expensive espresso filled the air.
Sitting behind a massive walnut desk was Arthur Sterling—seventy-six years old, wearing a bespoke three-piece gray suit, with silver hair and eyes as sharp as diamond scalpels. He was one of the most feared trial attorneys in the country, a man who charged a thousand dollars an hour just to answer a phone call.
When we walked in, Arthur didn’t stay behind his desk. He immediately stood up, walked around the walnut table with a warm smile, and wrapped me in a big, genuine bear hug.
“Helga!” Arthur boomed, his deep voice filling the room. “Look at you! Wearing that yellow dress! You look twenty years younger!”
“Stop lying, Arthur,” I laughed, patting his cheek. “I look like an old woman who spent forty years holding a mop.”
“You look like the woman who saved my law firm twenty-five years ago when you found those missing merger documents in the trash incinerator room at midnight,” Arthur said, his tone softening with deep respect. He looked at Alexander. “Your mother is a legend in this building, young man. When I was building this firm, she was the only person in this city who worked harder than I did.”
Arthur gestured for us to sit down on the plush leather sofas.
“Now, Helga told me briefly on the phone yesterday what happened,” Arthur said, dropping his friendly tone and adopting his lethal legal persona. “Tell me everything, Alexander. Leave out no details.”
For the next hour, Alexander laid out the nightmare of his three-year marriage: Bianca’s emotional manipulation, her forcing him to isolate from his mother, the hidden lines of credit, the forged signatures he suspected on loan documents, the physical snatching of the cash, and the recording from Mother’s Day.
Arthur listened silently, jotting down notes with a gold fountain pen.
When Alexander finished, Arthur set his pen down and leaned back.
“First of all,” Arthur said, “the audio recording your mother captured is 100% admissible in our jurisdiction because the recording device was placed in a common area of a property co-owned by your mother’s financial trust.”
Alexander blinked. “My mother’s financial trust?”
I cleared my throat softly. “We’ll get to that later, Alexander.”
Arthur grinned wolfishly. “Second, Ewald Vance’s tax fraud is currently being prosecuted by my former senior partner who is now the Deputy District Attorney. When I call him this afternoon and inform him that Ewald attempted to forcibly seize twenty-five thousand dollars of illicit cash from a seventy-two-year-old woman, his bail will likely be revoked.”
“What about Bianca?” Alexander asked, his voice steady. “She drained sixty thousand dollars from our joint savings account at 6:00 AM this morning. I checked my banking app before we came here. She took everything.”
Arthur laughed—a dry, delighted laugh.
“She took sixty thousand from a joint account after receiving a formal police notice of domestic disturbance?” Arthur shook his head. “That isn cut-and-dry civil asset dissipation during an impending divorce. Not only will she be forced by the family court judge to return every single penny with interest, but she has also just handed us the silver bullet for an emergency freeze order on her personal assets.”
May you like
Arthur stood up and walked over to his window, looking out over the city.
“Alexander, your wife and her family thought they were playing games with an old cleaning lady,” Arthur said, turning back to us with a cold, terrifying smile. “They didn’t realize that your mother has the most powerful legal team in this state standing behind her, completely free of charge.”
