Chapter 5 - The Attorney’s Gambit
Two days later, I sat in the office of my own attorney, Sarah Jenkins, a sharp, no-nonsense corporate litigator who specialized in financial fraud and identity restoration.
"Thorne is playing a game of chicken," Sarah said, leaning back in her leather chair and tapping a pen against her desk. "He knows Paige is facing criminal forgery charges. He's trying to manufacture a civil cross-claim of 'breach of verbal partnership' to force you into a settlement."
"What kind of settlement?" I asked.
"He wants you to drop the police charges, sign a release indemnifying Paige from the commercial lease debt, and agree to pay off the $2,680 credit card balance. In exchange, she won't pursue this fabricated 'partnership' lawsuit."
I let out a sharp, cold laugh. "She wants me to pay for her fraud so she can walk away clean."
"Exactly," Sarah said. "It's classic extortion wrapped in civil litigation language. But Thorne made a huge mistake."
"What mistake?"
"He didn't check where Paige got the retainer to hire him," Sarah smiled grimly.
I looked at her, confused. "Where did she get the money? Thorne charges at least $400 an hour. Paige doesn't have four hundred dollars in her bank account, let alone a retainer."
Sarah pulled out a financial disclosure document obtained through our preliminary record search.
"Three weeks ago, before your brunch argument," Sarah said, "a lump sum payment of $15,000 was deposited into Paige’s personal account. Do you know where it came from?"
I thought about my parents' meager savings, their broken washing machine, their struggle to pay property taxes. "My parents don't have fifteen thousand dollars."
"No," Sarah said, sliding a document across to me. "They don't. But your father's equity in his house was recently tapped through a home equity line of credit."
I stared at the document.
My father had taken out a second mortgage on the family home—the very home I had been helping them pay off for eight years—to give Paige a fifteen-thousand-dollar cash reserve. And Paige had used that money not to pay off her debts, but to hire a lawyer to bully me into silence.
The last lingering thread of filial guilt inside me snapped completely.
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"What do we do now?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet.
"Now," Sarah said, "we stop playing defense. We file a motion for an emergency injunction to freeze the accounts associated with The Willow Room LLC, and we deliver our evidence directly to the District Attorney."
