Chapter 2 - The Predator’s Price
The holding room behind Courtroom 4B smelled of stale institutional coffee and industrial bleach.
Arthur Sterling kicked the door shut and ripped his necktie loose. "What did you do, Jason? Look at me! What did you not tell me?"
"She has nothing," Jason hissed, pacing the floor like a caged wolf. His hair, meticulously styled with pomade that morning, had fallen across his damp forehead. "The files were wiped. I personally watched the hard drives go through the industrial shredder at the New Jersey facility. There are no backups! Daniel Brooks is bluffing. He’s using old medical records to get a bigger alimony settlement. Give her five million. Ten million. Just get her to sign the dismissal before the noon market trade!"
"Did you hear what Vance said?" Sterling yelled, slamming both hands on the metal table. "That wasn't an alimony threat! That was a Title 18 wire fraud and corporate sabotage referral! Daniel Brooks doesn't bluff. He was chief of the Southern District’s financial crimes division for eight years before he went into private practice! If he laid those papers on the judge's desk, the grand jury has already convened!"
Madison sat in the corner on a vinyl chair, her knees drawn up, mascara running in dark streaks down her cheeks. "Jason... you said she was just an insecure housewife. You said she lived off your money. You told me she was crazy!"
"Shut up, Madison!" Jason snarled, rounding on her with a vicious snarl. "You liked the black card, didn't you? You liked the penthouse in Aspen? You didn't ask where the money came from when you bought that twenty-thousand-dollar Cartier bracelet on my card last Tuesday! So keep your mouth shut!"
Madison flinched, shrinking into her designer wool coat. For the first time, she was seeing the man behind the tailored Tom Ford suits and the glowing *Forbes* magazine covers.
Across the hall, in the private attorney consultation room, the atmosphere was entirely different.
I pulled my gray wool coat back over my shoulders, buttoning it up to the neck. My hands were perfectly steady. The trembling had stopped the second I took off that coat in front of the world. For seven years, the scars had been my shame; now, they were my armor.
Daniel handed me a bottle of spring water and a tablet computer. The screen showed Mitchell Medical’s stock ticker.
"Trading opened twenty minutes ago," Daniel said quietly. "A reporter from Bloomberg tweeted a photo of your medical affidavit. Mitchell Medical is down fourteen percent already. The board is calling an emergency meeting for two o'clock."
"It's not enough," I said, watching the red line dip. "Fourteen percent is just panic selling by retail traders. Jason's institutional backers—the private equity funds in Boston—will buy the dip if they think he can settle out of court."
Daniel smiled faintly. It was a cold, sharp expression that reminded me why I had spent two years hunting for him in every legal directory in the country. "They won't buy this dip. Look at tab three."
I tapped the screen.
A forensic financial ledger appeared. It tracked sixteen off-the-books transactions originating from Mitchell Medical’s primary operating account, bouncing through two shell companies in the Cayman Islands, and terminating in a private wealth management account at Banque Cantonale de Genève.
"The account holder," Daniel said, "is not Jason Mitchell. It's Madison Brooks."
I froze, looking up at him. "He put the money in her name?"
"He thought he was being brilliant," Daniel explained. "Under Delaware corporate law and your existing prenuptial agreement, any assets in his name could technically be frozen during a contested divorce. But Madison was classified as an independent contractor, an external consultant. He transferred forty-two million dollars into her foreign trust over the last eighteen months, intending to clean it through a biotech buyout after your divorce was finalized."
"He made her his mule," I said, a dark humor bubbling up in my chest. "And she doesn't even know it."
"She knows she's wealthy," Daniel corrected. "She doesn't know she signed corporate documents making her personally liable for international money laundering. If Jason goes down, she goes to a federal penitentiary for twenty-five years."
I stared at the name on the screen: *Madison Brooks*.
She had laughed in my face six months ago. She had walked into my kitchen while Jason was at the office, uninvited, wearing my silk robe, and told me that youth always wins against age. She had picked up a framed photograph of my late mother and placed it face down on the counter, telling me the house needed a woman with modern tastes.
"Call Sterling," I told Daniel. "Tell him we don't want a ten-minute recess. Tell him I want to speak to Madison alone."
Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Iris, Sterling won't let her near you without him in the room."
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"He will if you tell him that what I have to say will save his law firm from an obstruction of justice charge." I stood up, smoothing the front of my coat. "Jason thinks his mistress is his greatest weapon against me. Let's see how loyal she is when she realizes she's the one holding the detonator."
***
