Chapter 13: The Corporate Goons
At exactly 9:00 AM, five men in bespoke, three-thousand-dollar suits walked into the Henderson & Warren conference room. They carried expensive leather briefcases and wore expressions of deep, performative boredom.
They were expecting an overwhelmed, underfunded public defender.
Instead, they walked into a high-tech boardroom I had personally designed. The walls were lined with digital smartboards, currently displaying heavily redacted, massive flowcharts of wire transfers.
I sat at the head of the long glass table, wearing a tailored charcoal suit, my hands folded neatly over a massive stack of subpoenaed bank records. Maya sat beside me, looking terrified but holding her ground.
Richard Sterling, the lead attorney, took his seat and didn't even bother unpacking his briefcase. He slid a single, sealed envelope across the glass table.
"Let's save everyone some time, Ms. Warren," Sterling said, leaning back with a smug smile. "Your RICO claim is incredibly creative fiction, but it would take you five years to litigate, and your clinic will run out of funding in six months. Inside that envelope is a settlement offer. Fifty thousand dollars for the girl's credit rehabilitation, and a standard non-disclosure agreement for you both."
He looked at Maya like she was a stain on the carpet. "Take the money, kid. It's more than you'll ever see otherwise."
I didn't even look at the envelope. I picked it up and dropped it straight into the shredder sitting next to my chair. The loud whirring sound of the paper being destroyed made Sterling's smile instantly vanish.
"What are you doing?" Sterling demanded, sitting up straight. "That was a formal settlement offer!"
"That was an insult, Mr. Sterling," I said, my voice dropping to that lethal, calm register I reserved for predators. "You didn't read discovery, did you? You assumed because we do legal aid, we couldn't possibly have the resources to run a forensic financial audit."
I pressed a button on the smartboard remote.
The screens flashed to life, displaying a highly detailed, timestamped ledger linking Safe Harbor's regional director to an offshore account in the Caymans, receiving exact 20% kickbacks on the dates the fraudulent credit cards were maxed out.
"We traced the crypto wallets, Richard," I said smoothly, watching the color drain from the faces of all five corporate lawyers. "We subpoenaed the IP addresses. We have the internal emails where your regional director specifically targeted minority orphans over the age of sixteen because 'they don't have anyone checking their credit.'"
May you like
Sterling stared at the screens, his mouth slightly open. The boredom was entirely gone, replaced by absolute panic.
"You're looking at twenty years in federal prison for your executives, and the complete liquidation of Safe Harbor Solutions," I stated, leaning over the table. "You aren't here to offer a settlement. You are here to negotiate your unconditional surrender. Now, open your briefcase and take out a pen. We're going to talk about a nine-figure victim compensation fund."
