The Man Every Family Owes

Chapter Five: The Lawyer Who Lost Everything

By noon, Tamsin had called thirty-one law firms, and every one of them had found a reason to say no.

Some claimed a conflict of interest. Some said their calendars were full until spring. One senior partner simply said, "I have children, Ms. Okafor," and hung up. The word had gone out across Brackwell overnight. The Five Pillars, the families who controlled the city's banks, ports, media, hospitals and construction, did not want Declan Hurst in a courtroom with a decent lawyer beside him, and no firm in the city wanted to find out what happened to people who disagreed.

"There's one name left," Tamsin said, turning her laptop toward him. "You're not going to like it."

Declan looked at the photograph and felt something twist in his chest. "Margot."

Margot Brisk had been his public defender seven years ago, a sharp-tongued woman in a secondhand suit who had believed him when nobody else did. After the verdict, she went to the bar association with proof that the jury foreman had taken a bribe. Within a month, she was the one disbarred, for misconduct, while the foreman retired to a villa by the sea. Now she did tax returns in the back room of a pawn shop on Rope Walk.

Declan found her behind a desk buried in receipts and shoeboxes, a pencil behind one ear and reading glasses on the end of her nose. She looked up when the bell over the curtain jingled and put down her pencil. She had clearly seen the news.

"No," she said.

"Margot..."

"No." She took off her glasses and folded them with great care. "I watched them put you in that van, Declan. I stood at your graveside. Then I spent two years fighting for my license and lost it, and my marriage went with it. Your case cost me everything I had." Her voice was flat, but her hands weren't quite steady. "Whatever this is, I'm not doing it again. Please leave."

Before he could answer, the bell jingled again.

Five men pushed through the curtain into the cramped room. The one in front was lean and sharp-faced, in a leather jacket and too many rings, and Declan knew him from the guard post at Fairholm Hall. Jory Danner, Grant's fixer. The four behind him were bigger, and one carried a tire iron.

"Ms. Brisk," Jory said pleasantly. "Mr. Toller wanted to make sure you weren't thinking about getting involved in any family court business. He'd hate for this place to have an accident." He glanced at Declan and grinned. "Well, look at that. Saves me a trip."

He reached for Declan's collar.

Declan caught his wrist, twisted it outward, and drove his forearm down across the joint. The crack was loud in the small room. Jory screamed and dropped to his knees, cradling his arm, and the four men behind him surged forward.

"Wait," Declan said. He didn't raise his voice, but something in it made them stop.

In his ear, Tamsin was already reading from Jory's bank records, fast and low, and Declan repeated it as she spoke. "Grant Toller pays two and a half thousand per man for a job like this. Your boss gives you fifteen hundred and keeps the rest. That's forty percent off the top, every job, for over a year." He looked at the biggest of them, the one holding the tire iron. "Check his phone if you don't believe me. The transfers come in from Toller Holdings every Friday."

The big man looked down at Jory. Jory, white with pain, didn't deny it fast enough.

Declan stepped aside. The four men closed around their employer and hauled him out through the curtain, and the shouting carried on into the street until a car door slammed.

In the silence that followed, Margot stared at him. Then she stood, took her coat from the back of her chair, and pulled it on.

"I have a price," she said.

"Name it."

"When this is over, you tell me who paid the foreman." She met his eyes. "Don't pretend you don't know. You've got that look."

"Deal," Declan said.

That same morning, Draper Media had put June on its front page. Beneath a grainy photograph of her kneeling at the memorial ran a headline: THE MURDERER'S MISTRESS. The story painted her as a woman who had lied under oath to free her lover and was now using her child to help him claim the Fairholm name.

Declan found her outside a pharmacy on Cooper Street, her face blank with shock. A woman she had never met had spat on her at the counter, and two teenagers were still filming her through the window.

He got her into the car and sat with his jaw locked while Tamsin drove. "Octavia Draper owes the Lantern," he said finally. "Her paper could print a retraction by tonight."

"And by tomorrow, every Pillar in this city would know the Lantern is alive," Tamsin said. "Every token we send is a flare in the dark, Declan. Whoever bought Ferro will be watching for one. Do you really want to show them where we are?"

He looked at June, who was staring out the window at nothing, and his hands curled into fists. Then he made himself let it go. He held back.

Margot, meanwhile, spent four hours in the county records office and came out with proof that Judge Ferro's family trust held a large block of Fairholm Maritime shares. By early evening, the chief judge had removed Ferro from the case for conflict of interest. For almost an hour, it felt like winning.

Then Beatrice's lawyers struck back. They filed an emergency motion citing the child's welfare, and the court granted it. The hearing was moved up to nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

"That gives us fifteen hours," Margot said, "and not a single witness."

Tamsin looked up from her laptop, her face sharp in its glow. "Maybe one. I've found Gordon Platt."

Declan looked up. Platt had been the Fairholm family's chauffeur. His sworn testimony, that he had seen Declan behind the wheel on the night Sebastian died, was what had convicted him.

"He's been living under another name in Sandwick, a fishing town up the coast," Tamsin said. Then her expression changed. "There's something else. Sutter's suspended, and his creditors are circling, so I've been watching his bank card. It was used forty minutes ago." She turned the screen toward him. "One-way train ticket. To Sandwick."