Dead Man's Winter: Jacob Reed

Chapter 6: The Retainer

The law offices of Chambers, Roberts & Associates occupied the fourteenth floor of a glass tower downtown. Jacob had done his research. Victoria Chambers was not just a divorce attorney. She was the divorce attorney, the one whose name made cheating husbands lose sleep and whose courtroom record read like a highlight reel of total destruction.

Her retainer f*e alone was enough to buy a decent car. Jacob paid it without blinking.

Victoria's office was clean and sharp, everything in its place, nothing decorative except a single framed quote on the wall that read, "The truth doesn't need volume. It needs timing." She was a tall woman in her late forties with reading glasses perched on her nose and the patient expression of someone who had heard every lie a human being could invent.

She gestured to the chair across her desk. "Sit down, Mr. Reed. You mentioned on the phone that this was urgent and complicated. In my experience, clients who use both those words usually have a very interesting story."

"I'll keep it short." Jacob sat and placed a thick folder on her desk. "I was married to Julie Evans for ten years. We divorced on March 3rd, uncontested. Two days later, on March 5th, I purchased one hundred lottery tickets. On March 8th, those tickets won the Mega Jackpot. Two hundred ten million dollars."

Victoria's pen paused over her notepad. She looked up at him over her glasses, her face professionally neutral but her eyes sharpening with clear interest. "Go on."

"Julie and her family found out about the money. They showed up at my new property demanding half. When I refused, Julie recorded a video accusing me of having an affair and hiding marital assets. It's viral now. Hundreds of thousands of views."

"I've seen it." Victoria opened her laptop and turned it toward him. Julie's tearful face filled the screen, frozen mid-sob. "My paralegal flagged it this morning. Very convincing performance, I have to say. She has a real talent for crying on camera."

"She has a real talent for a lot of things." Jacob's voice stayed flat.

"Walk me through the timeline again, slowly." Victoria pulled a yellow legal pad closer and uncapped a fresh pen. "Dates matter more than feelings in my courtroom."

"March 3rd, divorce finalized at the civil affairs bureau. Uncontested. I voluntarily gave up the house, the car, all joint savings, custody, and child support. Everything went to her. I walked out with the clothes on my back and about four hundred dollars in a personal account she never tracked."

"And the lottery tickets?"

"Purchased March 5th at the shop on Fifth Street, two days after the divorce was finalized. I signed and dated the back of every ticket. The shop has thirty days of surveillance footage showing my face, the time, and the transaction. I also have notarized copies of the purchase receipt."

Victoria wrote steadily, her handwriting small and precise. "The drawing was the 8th. When did you claim?"

"March 9th. I called the state lottery office, invoked the anonymity clause, and arranged structured payouts into accounts opened under my name only, all post-divorce."

"Smart." Victoria set her pen down and folded her hands together, leaning back slightly. "Most lottery winners run straight to the cameras and hand their ex-spouse a lawsuit on a silver platter. You built a paper wall before you even cashed the check. Who advised you?"

"Nobody. I advised myself."

"Even smarter." A thin smile crossed her lips before it disappeared. "Now, the folder. Show me what you brought."

Jacob opened the folder and laid out the documents one by one. "Divorce certificate, stamped and dated. Lottery purchase receipts with signatures and dates. Notarized timeline prepared by my previous attorney, Roberts. Bank statements showing account creation dates, all post-divorce. And this."

He pulled out a USB drive and set it beside the papers.

"What's on it?"

"Audio and video. My home security system recorded Julie, Arnold, and Celeste at my property on two separate occasions. The first visit, they demanded half the lottery winnings, called me a cockroach, a stray mutt, a rat, and a worm. The second visit, the security guards turned them away on my instructions, and Arnold threatened to, and I quote, ruin my life if I didn't hand over the money."

Victoria plugged in the USB drive and watched the footage in silence. Arnold's red face filled the screen, finger jabbing, voice booming. Celeste's shrill insults cut through the speakers. Julie's performance shifted between tearful victim and cold-eyed strategist depending on who she thought was watching.

When the clips ended, Victoria removed the drive and placed it on top of the folder with something close to satisfaction in her eyes. "Mr. Reed, I want you to understand something. In twenty-two years of family law, I have never seen a client walk into my office with a case this clean."

"How clean?"

"Surgically clean." She counted on her fingers as she spoke. "One, the divorce was finalized before the lottery purchase. There is no overlap. Two, you voluntarily surrendered all marital assets, which means you cannot be accused of hiding wealth during the marriage. Three, the lottery winnings are classified as post-dissolution individual property under state law. Four, you have notarized proof of every date, every dollar, every transaction. Five, she recorded a viral video making accusations of affairs and hidden assets, none of which are true, and that video is now evidence of defamation and harassment."

"So she has no claim?"

"She has less than no claim." Victoria pulled off her glasses and cleaned them slowly, her voice carrying the calm weight of absolute certainty. "If she takes this to court, she loses. If her lawyer is competent, he'll tell her to drop it before the judge reads the first page. And if she keeps making those videos, we countersue for defamation, emotional distress, and harassment. Every view on that video becomes a dollar sign in our favor."

Jacob let that settle. In his past life, he had never fought back. He had accepted Arnold's insults, Celeste's contempt, Julie's manipulation, all of it, because he thought enduring was the same as loving. It had earned him a bullet in the chest and the truth about his son whispered into his dying ears.

"There's one more thing." His voice dropped, and for the first time since walking in, something raw flickered in his eyes. "The child. Cameron. I raised him for four years believing he was mine."

Victoria's pen stopped. She looked at him carefully, reading what he was not saying. "You have doubts about paternity?"

"More than doubts." He pulled a sealed envelope from his jacket pocket and placed it on the desk. "Hair samples. I need a certified DNA lab, results admissible in court, fully documented chain of custody."

Victoria picked up the envelope and held it up to the light, her expression shifting from professional interest to something sharper, almost predatory. "If this comes back the way you're suggesting, Mr. Reed, it changes everything. Paternity fraud is a nuclear weapon in family court. It undermines her credibility on every claim she's ever made, custody, support, property, all of it. A judge who sees a ten-year paternity deception will not look kindly on anything else that comes out of her mouth."

"That's what I'm counting on."

"I'll send this to the lab today. Results in five to seven business days, certified and sealed." She placed the envelope in her desk drawer and locked it. "In the meantime, do not respond to her video. Do not contact her family. Do not post anything online. Let her keep talking. Every word she says publicly becomes ammunition we collect privately."

"I wasn't planning on saying a word."

"Good." Victoria stood and extended her hand across the desk. Her grip was firm and dry, the handshake of a woman who had never lost a battle she chose to fight. "Mr. Reed, I'm going to be very direct with you. In my career, I've represented hundreds of clients. Most of them come to me angry, or scared, or heartbroken. You're the first one who came in with a locked folder, a timeline, and a sealed envelope. Whatever happened in your marriage, you came out of it sharper than you went in."

Jacob shook her hand once and let go. "I came out of it dead, Ms. Chambers. Everything since then is borrowed time."

Victoria studied his face for a long moment, searching for the meaning behind those words. Jacob offered nothing more. He gathered his jacket, nodded once, and walked out of her office.

In the elevator going down, he stood alone and watched the floor numbers drop. The DNA test was in motion. The lawyer was loaded and aimed. The evidence was sealed in a dimension no search warrant could reach.

Julie wanted to play the victim. She wanted tears and hashtags and internet mobs.

Let her. The DNA results would speak louder than a million videos, and when they did, every tear she had ever faked would turn to acid in her mouth.

All Jacob had to do was wait, keep building, and let Julie bury herself with her own shovel.