Chapter 5: Brandon Fights Back
Grace filed the initial fraud complaint on a Wednesday morning.
By Wednesday afternoon, Brandon called eleven times.
I let every one go to voicemail.
By evening, he stopped calling and sent a single text instead.
*You want a war, Jessi?
Fine.
But you should know I have something that will end your career before this goes any further.
Call me back.
Last chance.*
I showed it to Grace.
She read it twice.
"Forward that to me.
Don't respond."
"What do you think he has?"
"I don't know yet.
But a man making threats in writing is a man who's frightened." She set her phone down.
"Let him be frightened."
I forwarded the text and went back to work.
I had three client files open on my desk and a quarterly review due by Friday.
I was not going to let Brandon Sterling cost me a single billable hour more than he already had.
He showed up at my office on Thursday.
The receptionist called back to my desk.
"There's a man at the front asking for you.
He says he's your husband."
"He's my soon-to-be former husband.
Tell him I'm in a meeting."
"He says he'll wait."
"Tell him the meeting ends at five o'clock."
At four fifty-eight, I walked out to the lobby with Grace beside me.
I had called her the moment the receptionist hung up.
Brandon was sitting in one of the chairs by the window, still in the same suit he'd worn to the wedding, now wrinkled at the elbows.
He stood up when he saw me.
"You brought your lawyer to a conversation," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Sit down, Brandon."
He stayed standing.
"I'm not here to fight."
"Then say what you came to say."
He looked at Grace, then back at me.
He reached into his jacket and produced a folded sheet of paper.
He held it out.
I didn't take it.
Grace did.
She unfolded it, read it, and her expression didn't change.
She handed it to me.
It was a printout of an email.
Sent from my work account, eighteen months ago, to a client named Darnell Whitfield.
The email contained specific language about a tax strategy that, read in the worst possible light, could be characterized as advice to underreport offshore income.
My stomach tightened.
I remembered that email.
I remembered Darnell Whitfield.
I remembered exactly what I had meant by every word in it.
"That's not what it looks like," I said.
"No?" Brandon's voice had recovered some of its old confidence.
"Because it looks like a licensed CPA advising a client to conceal taxable income.
Which is a felony.
Which means your license." He tilted his head.
"Drop the fraud complaint.
Sign the property transfers.
Walk away with a clean settlement.
Or that email goes to the Arizona State Board of Accountancy tomorrow morning."
The lobby was very quiet.
Grace folded the email carefully and placed it in her bag.
"Mr.
Sterling, you've just made an explicit threat to report a professional to her licensing board as leverage in a legal dispute.
That is textbook extortion.
You did it in front of me, a licensed attorney, and in a building with security cameras." She smiled pleasantly.
"Thank you for that."
Brandon's jaw tightened.
"That email is real."
"I'm sure it is," Grace said.
"And when we provide the full context of that email, including the follow-up correspondence where your wife explicitly advised Mr.
Whitfield against the strategy and documented her reasoning, it will be considerably less interesting." She looked at him steadily.
"Do you want to try something else, or are we done here?"
Brandon looked at me.
Not at Grace.
At me.
"Jessi." His voice dropped.
"I know I went too far last night.
I know that.
But if you push this, you will destroy the whole family.
My mother.
Chloe.
People who don't deserve—"
"Don't," I said.
"Don't use them now.
You didn't think about them last night when you dropped my plate on the floor."
Something moved across his face.
Not quite regret.
Something older and more complicated than that.
"I need more time," he said quietly.
"You had ten years," I said.
"We're done here."
He stood in the lobby for a moment longer.
Then he picked up his jacket from the chair, walked past us without another word, and pushed through the glass door into the afternoon heat.
Grace watched him go.
"He'll try again."
"I know."
"He has one more move.
Maybe two." She turned back toward the hallway.
"Let's make sure we're ready for both of them."
That evening, I found a voicemail from Chloe.
Her voice was unsteady, and she was clearly crying.
*Jessi.
I know I have no right to call you.
I know what we did at the wedding was unforgivable.
But Mom doesn't know what's happening with the money.
She really doesn't.
And I'm scared.
Brandon won't talk to me and I don't know what to do.
Please.
If there's any part of you that—*
The message cut off.
Thirty seconds of silence, then the automated voice telling me to press seven to delete.
May you like
I didn't press seven.
I sat with the phone in my hand for a long time.
