The Luna Who Walked Back In

CHAPTER ONE Title: The Case She Was Born to Win POV: Evelyn The courtroom smells like old wood, printer ink and the very specific kind of fear that rich men carry when they have been caught. Evelyn has been sitting with that smell for six years now, and it has never stopped being satisfying. "Mr. Vincent," she says, and her voice does not rise, "you stated under oath that your company had no knowledge of the land transfer made on the fourteenth of March." The man in the witness box is expensive. His suit is expensive. His lawyer, sitting behind the defense table with his arms crossed, is expensive. Vincent has been lying for twenty-three minutes with the kind of smooth confidence that comes from never being challenged in a room that matters. Evelyn sets one sheet of paper on the podium in front of her. "Are you aware," she continues, "that under Section 9, Article 4 of the Consolidated Pack Land Jurisdiction Act, any land transfer exceeding forty hectares within a recognized pack territory must be registered under both corporate and pack council records within seventy-two hours of execution?" Vincent blinks. His lawyer's arms uncrossed. "I am not familiar with that section," Vincent says carefully. “Wow! I see…That is interesting," Evelyn replies, "because your signature is on the pack council registration form filed on the sixteenth of March. Two days after a transfer you claim you had no knowledge of. You wanna take a look?" The paper goes up. The judge leans forward. Vincent's lawyer is already on his feet, but the objection dies somewhere in his throat because the document is already in evidence and has been since Monday morning. Evelyn filed it herself. The room goes quiet the way rooms go quiet when something is over and everyone knows it except the person losing. The judge rules in her favor. It is not a dramatic moment. It is a clean one, the way all truly good work is clean. Solomon is waiting in the hallway when she pushes through the courtroom doors. He is sixty-one, short, and always looks like he is calculating something. He has been her managing partner for three years and he has never once given her a compliment she did not earn. "Good work in there," he says, which means she won decisively enough that even Solomon noticed. "The document was there the whole time," she tells him. "They just assumed nobody would look." "People always assume that." He falls into step beside her. "You have a new client…Came in this morning. Requested you by name." She slows slightly. "What kind of case?" "Private security consultation. Corporate restructuring with some forensic overlap." He hands her a thin file. "Retainer already came through. Seven figures." She takes the file. She reads the name on the tab. R. Goldmane. Private Security Consultation. Her hand does not shake. She has spent a year training her hands not to shake. "Conference room B is free," Solomon says. "He is already waiting." She thanks him. She walks down the hallway. She pushes open the door to Conference Room B. The man on the other side of the room stands up when she enters. She drops her files. She picks them up. She sits down. She opens the folder. "What service," she says, without looking up, "does your company require?" The silence in the room is enormous. It has weight and texture and it presses against her ears. "Evelyn," Raphael says. Her pen moves across the top of the notepad. Date. Client name. Case reference number. She does not look at him for three full minutes, and every single one of those minutes costs her something she will not name out loud. When she finally raises her head, her face is completely composed, and the man across from her looks like someone just showed him the ocean for the first time. "Mr. Goldmane," she says. "I will need a full account of your security concerns, your corporate structure and any prior legal engagements relevant to this matter." Raphael sits back down slowly. He looks at her the way people look at something they lost and then found changed beyond what they prepared for. "I will tell you everything," he says quietly. "Good," she replies. "Start from the beginning." She writes his first answer down without blinking, and somewhere underneath the clean surface of her composure, her heart is doing something wild and uncontrolled that she absolutely cannot afford right now. She will deal with it later...She always deals with things later.