Chapter 1 - The Courtroom Ambush
The courtroom smelled of lemon polish and old paper, a sterile contrast to the chaotic pounding in my chest. My mother, whom I hadn't seen in eighteen years, sat across the aisle. She wore a tailored charcoal suit that screamed expensive, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed. She didn't look like a woman mourning her late husband; she looked like a CEO about to finalize a hostile takeover.
Next to her sat Richard Sterling, a corporate litigator known for draining bank accounts and destroying reputations. He was whispering in her ear, and that’s when I saw it—the smirk. A tiny, triumphant curling of her painted lips.
"Don't look at her, Leo," Helen Pierce, Arthur’s attorney, murmured, her eyes fixed on her legal pad. "That's exactly what they want. They want you emotional. They want you reactive."
"How is she even here, Helen?" I hissed, my hands gripping the edge of the mahogany table until my knuckles turned white. "She abandoned us. She divorced him."
"She didn't divorce him, Leo," Helen said, her voice dropping to a grim whisper as the judge entered the room. "That's the problem. Arthur filed the paperwork, but she never signed it. She vanished. Under state law, she is still technically his widow. And she’s claiming the adoption was fraudulent."
My blood ran cold. The judge slammed his gavel, and Sterling stood up, buttoning his suit jacket.
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"Your Honor," Sterling’s voice boomed, dripping with artificial sympathy. "We are here today to right a grievous wrong. My client, Evelyn Vance, was forced away from her husband and her beloved biological son by a man who slowly lost his grip on reality. We intend to prove that Arthur Vance was not of sound mind when he drafted this so-called will, and that the adoption of Leo was done under coercion, making my client the sole rightful heir to the Vance estate."
Evelyn dabbed her dry eyes with a tissue. I stared at her, nauseated. She was going to drag the only real father I ever had through the mud, just to get her hands on money she didn't even know existed a month ago.
