Chapter 7 - The Emergency Counsel
Elena walked briskly back inside the air-conditioned sanctuary of the restaurant office, her boots clicking sharply against the tile floor. She picked up the blinking receiver, pressing line two without breaking stride.
"This is Elena Vance," she said, her voice dropping into a cold, professional register.
"Mrs. Vance—Elena—please, you have to listen to me," a breathless, frantic voice babbled through the receiver. It belonged to Richard Sterling, senior partner at Sterling & Brooks, a high-priced family law firm that usually only represented corporate executives and old-money divorces. "I received an emergency retainer notice from Mark Miller twenty minutes ago, but upon reviewing the public filings and the federal asset freezes executed by Detective Ramirez today... my firm must formally decline representation."
Elena raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the wooden edge of her desk. "You're calling me to tell me you won't represent my husband? That seems like an ethical breach of client privilege, Mr. Sterling."
"There is no client privilege when the retainer funds are demonstrably sourced from embezzled corporate assets!" Sterling stammered, sounding genuinely terrified of being tangled in the federal net. "Furthermore, Mark is currently in an interrogation room at the downtown precinct refusing to speak without a public defender, and his father, Michael Vance, has just suffered a mild cardiac event in our lobby."
The room seemed to tilt slightly. "Michael had a heart attack?"
"Paramount Ambulance just transported him to St. David’s Medical Center," Sterling rushed on, his words tumbling over each other. "Elena, Mark has nothing left. His accounts are frozen, his mother is sitting in a county jail cell awaiting arraignment, and the federal prosecutor is looking at a twenty-count indictment for wire fraud. If you file for an emergency expedited default divorce right now with a signed waiver of community property liability, you can legally sever Aura from the bankruptcy estate before the federal trustees auction off every asset the family ever touched."
Elena stared blankly at a framed photograph on her desk—a picture of herself five years ago, covered in flour and smiling proudly on the day she signed the lease for Aura. Back then, she had believed marriage meant sharing everything. Now, she realized survival meant cutting away the dead weight with surgical precision.
"Send the default waiver to my secure email by 5:00 PM, Mr. Sterling," Elena said coldly. "If it's on my desk before dinner service starts, I'll sign it. If it's one minute late, I let the federal trustees tear what's left of Mark's estate to absolute shreds."
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Before the lawyer could beg or bargain further, Elena slammed the receiver down onto its cradle.
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