Chapter 4 - The Lawyer's Office
Elaine Brooks’ office looked like it belonged to someone who fought corporate sharks for breakfast and lived on black coffee and spite. Located on the fourth floor of a limestone building near the courthouse, the walls were lined with heavy oak bookshelves, law reviews, and framed newspaper clippings about landmark class-action lawsuits against predatory nursing homes and corrupt municipal trusts.
Elaine herself was in her late forties, with sharp silver-streaked hair cut into a severe bob, wire-rimmed glasses, and a tailored navy pantsuit that looked expensive enough to pay my rent for a year.
She poured me a cup of black coffee from a chipped ceramic mug, pushed it across her mahogany desk, and sat back, her fingers steepled beneath her chin.
“Alright, Chloe,” she said, her dark eyes studying me with intense calculation. “You called my office at midnight talking about a forged signature, you sent me a photo of a text message threatening your life an hour ago, and now you’re sitting in my chair smelling like wet pavement and brake fluid. Talk to me. And leave nothing out.”
For the next forty minutes, I told her everything.
I told her about Beatrice Costello sitting at Table Seven in Il Canto. I told her about Vincent Moretti’s loud, cruel insults, thinking a deaf old woman wouldn't understand. I told her every single sign Beatrice had made—word for word, gesture for gesture: The beach house deed. The bank authorization. My husband’s trust. The man beside my son is stealing from me.
I described the black folder, the yellow signature tabs, the forged blue ink, and the sharp crack of Beatrice’s palm across Vincent’s face.
When I finished, Elaine was staring at me in absolute silence. She slowly took off her glasses, placed them on the desk, and exhaled a long breath.
“You know American Sign Language fluently,” she stated, not as a question, but as a realization.
“My brother Leo was deaf,” I replied, my voice dropping slightly. “He died two years ago. I spent eighteen years being his voice to a world that didn't know how to listen to him.”
Elaine nodded slowly. “That explains why you caught every detail. Most people wouldn't even know what an ASL signer was saying if their life depended on it. But Vincent Moretti and Gabriel Costello... they are playing a very dangerous game.”
“Gabriel seemed shocked,” I noted. “Or at least, he didn't know the full extent of it.”
“Gabriel Costello is a pragmatist,” Elaine said, leaning forward. “He runs the shipping terminals, the union logistics, and half the import-export houses on the waterfront. He’s powerful, but he’s stretched thin. Vincent Moretti is his chief financial adviser and legal proxy—the guy who handles the family estate, pays the taxes, and manages Beatrice’s care. If Vincent has been systematically looting Sal Costello’s estate using forged authorizations, we’re talking about millions of dollars in real estate, shipping shares, and liquid trust funds.”
“And they tried to kill me because I’m the only independent witness who can legally translate what Beatrice said in a court of law,” I added, sliding my phone across the desk.
On the screen were the three photos of the severed brake line, alongside the screenshot of the threatening text message and the photo of me walking into my apartment.
Elaine scrolled through them slowly. A small, cold smile touched the corner of her mouth.
“They are amateurs when it comes to legal strategy,” Elaine murmured. “They think muscle solves every problem. But cutting a brake line and sending digital threats? That leaves a digital and physical forensic trail that even a corrupt local judge can’t ignore.”
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Go to the police?”
“Not yet,” Elaine said, standing up and walking over to a large wall map of New Jersey’s shipping districts. “If we go to the local precinct, Vincent’s brother-in-law is a captain in the Fourth District. It’ll get buried before the paperwork hits the desk. We need something bigger. We need leverage that Gabriel Costello cannot ignore.”
“What kind of leverage?”
“Beatrice Costello,” Elaine said, turning back to me. “She’s the sole trustee of the family assets until her passing, and according to Sal Costello’s original 1998 will—which I happen to have archived in my firm’s historical records—she holds absolute voting control over the entire family syndicate's real estate holdings. Vincent has been trying to force her to sign away that control for two years.”
Elaine walked back to her desk, tapped her pen against the blotter, and looked me dead in the eye.
“Chloe, how good is your memory?”
May you like
“I told you,” I said. “I translated for Leo every day of my life. I don't forget conversations.”
“Good,” Elaine said. “Because we’re going to need you to become Beatrice Costello’s official legal interpreter. And we are going to serve Vincent Moretti a trap he’ll never see coming.”
