Dead Man's Winter: Jacob Reed

Chapter 7: Five Hundred Million

The conference room at Victoria's firm smelled of fresh coffee and tension. A long oak table separated the two sides like a battlefield. Jacob sat on the left with Victoria beside him, her legal pad already open, pen ready. Julie sat on the right with Arnold, Celeste, and a lawyer named Patrick, a thin man with slicked hair and a confident smile that hadn't earned anything yet.

Patrick opened first, laying a printed document on the table and sliding it across. "Thank you all for coming. My client, Mrs. Evans, is prepared to settle this matter privately and avoid the expense of litigation. We believe a fair resolution benefits everyone."

"Let's hear the number." Victoria did not touch the document.

Patrick cleared his throat and straightened his tie, the gesture of a man about to say something he knew was ridiculous but had been paid to say anyway. "Given the length of the marriage, Mrs. Evans's contributions to the household, and the emotional damage caused by Mr. Reed's sudden departure, we are requesting a settlement of two hundred million dollars."

The room went quiet. Jacob looked at Patrick the way a man looks at a fly that landed on his food.

"Two hundred million." Victoria repeated it slowly, letting each syllable sit in the air. "For a marriage that ended by mutual uncontested agreement, with full asset surrender to your client, two days before the lottery purchase. Two hundred million for what, exactly?"

"For ten years of sacrifice." Julie spoke up, her voice carrying that practiced tremble. She looked at Jacob with soft, wounded eyes. "Jacob, I gave you a decade of my life. I supported you when nobody else would. I raised our son while you worked late and forgot birthdays. I'm not asking for charity. I'm asking for what's fair."

"Fair." Jacob turned the word over like a stone with something dead underneath. "Julie, you got the house, the car, the savings, and full custody. You got everything. Now you want two hundred million on top of it?"

"You won two hundred and ten million dollars two days after leaving me with nothing." Julie tilted her head, and her voice stayed smooth and reasonable, the voice of a woman who had practiced this in the mirror. "The timing alone proves you were planning this. You hid money, you manipulated the divorce, and now you're sitting in a mansion while your son eats canned soup."

"Cameron eats canned soup?" Jacob's eyebrow lifted. "What happened to the house and the car and the savings I gave you?"

Celeste leaned forward from behind Julie, her face pinched with contempt. "Don't you dare question how we feed that child. You abandoned him. A father who walks out doesn't get to ask what's for dinner."

"Mrs. Evans." Victoria's voice cut through clean and cold. "You are not a party to this negotiation. Please refrain from speaking, or I will ask you to leave the room."

Celeste's mouth snapped shut, though her eyes burned with enough hatred to melt the table.

Arnold, who had been sitting with his arms crossed and his chest puffed out, finally spoke. "Let me put this simply, since lawyers like to make things complicated. Jacob owes this family. Period. Without us, he'd still be a nobody. The money he won was built on the back of our support, our connections, our daughter's love. Two hundred million is generous. We could ask for more."

"You could ask for the moon, Mr. Evans." Victoria did not look up from her notepad, her voice flat as a judge reading a parking ticket. "Asking and receiving are very different activities."

"Jacob." Julie softened her voice again, reaching her hand across the table like she wanted to touch his. "I don't want to fight you. I never did. This isn't about lawyers and numbers. It's about our family. About Cameron. Can't we just agree on something reasonable and move on? For his sake?"

Jacob looked at her outstretched hand. In another life, he would have taken it. In another life, that hand had held a gun.

"No deal." His voice was quiet and final. "No settlement. Not two hundred million, not two hundred dollars. We go to trial."

Patrick's confident smile flickered. "Mr. Reed, I'd strongly advise against that. Public opinion is already firmly on my client's side. A trial will only amplify the scrutiny on your finances, your behavior, and your character. The court of public opinion has already delivered its verdict."

"Then let the real court deliver a different one." Jacob stood, buttoning his jacket. "We're done here."

"You'll regret this." Arnold's voice followed him to the door, thick with threat. "Every penny you're hoarding, we'll take it all. Every last cent."

Jacob walked out without looking back. Victoria gathered her files, gave Patrick a thin, professional smile that said nothing and everything, and followed her client into the elevator.

That evening, Julie sat cross-legged on her bed with Nathan's laptop open and three credit card applications spread across the comforter. Her jaw was set, her eyes hard and focused, the softness she wore for cameras completely stripped away.

"He thinks he can ignore me." She typed furiously, filling out the loan application. "He thinks if he sits in his little castle long enough, I'll go away. He has no idea who he's dealing with."

"How much are you borrowing?" Nathan lay beside her, scrolling his phone with lazy interest.

"Fifty thousand to start." Her fingers flew across the keys. "Online promotion packages, paid trending hashtags, influencer reposts. I'll make that video hit five million views by the end of the week. By the time I'm done, Jacob Reed won't be able to walk into a grocery store without someone spitting in his cart."

"That's a lot of debt, Jules." Nathan's tone was casual, not concerned, just observational, like a man watching someone else gamble.

"It's an investment." She glanced at him and her voice turned sweet and warm, the voice reserved only for him. "Baby, when we get that money, fifty thousand will be pocket change. Trust me. I know how to break him. I've done it for ten years."

Nathan smiled and kissed her forehead. "That's my girl."

The money hit the promotion platforms within twenty-four hours. Julie's video, already viral, exploded. Paid bots amplified the comments. Influencers with millions of followers reposted her story with angry captions. The hashtag #JusticeForJulie trended in three states.

The next morning, Jacob was measuring reinforced steel panels in his basement when his phone rang. Victoria's name lit the screen.

"Good morning, Mr. Reed. I hope you slept well, because the internet did not."

"How bad?"

"Her video crossed two million views overnight." Victoria's voice was calm but precise, delivering facts the way a surgeon describes where the cut will go. "My team counted over forty thousand negative comments naming you directly. Several news outlets have picked up the story. There's a petition circulating to investigate your finances, and three different women's advocacy groups have issued statements supporting her."

"Interesting." Jacob set down his tape measure and sat on an overturned crate.

"It gets better. She took out significant online loans to fund paid promotion. She's spending money she doesn't have to burn your reputation. The irony is almost poetic."

"Let her spend." Jacob's voice carried no panic, no anger, not even mild annoyance. "Every dollar she borrows is a dollar she'll owe when this falls apart. And every promoted post is another piece of evidence for our defamation case."

"My thoughts exactly." Victoria's smile was almost audible. "I've had my paralegal archiving every post, every comment, every transaction she's made to boost this campaign. When we file the countersuit, the paper trail will be devastating."

"Anything else?"

"Just one thing. The DNA results come back in four days. I suggest you enjoy the quiet while it lasts."

Jacob hung up and went back to his measurements. The steel panels needed to cover every basement wall, floor to ceiling. In eighty days, those walls would be the difference between survival and freezing to death in the dark. Internet mobs didn't scare a man who had seen the world end.

His phone buzzed again. A text from Julie.

He opened it.

"Hi Jacob. I'm sure you've seen the numbers by now. Two million views and counting. The whole country knows your name, and not in a good way. I've been thinking, and honestly, 200 million isn't enough anymore. You put me through so much pain, so much humiliation, that I think 500 million is a more appropriate number. That's my new offer. Take it or watch me upload the next video tonight. This one has Cameron in it, crying and asking where his daddy went. Your move."

A laughing emoji followed the message. Then a kiss emoji. Then silence.

Jacob read it twice. Then he screenshotted the message, saved it to his spatial dimension along with every other piece of evidence, and set the phone face down on the crate.

Five hundred million. She had more than doubled her demand in less than forty-eight hours, drunk on views and comments and the borrowed confidence of strangers on the internet.

He picked up his tape measure and pressed it against the next wall. Four more days until the DNA results arrived. Four more days of letting Julie pile debt on top of lies on top of fraud.

And when those results came back, five hundred million would be the least of her problems.