The Blackwood family lawyer's office was nothing like Mia had imagined.
She had pictured something cold and sterile—white walls, metal furniture, the kind of place where emotions were checked at the door like coats at a restaurant. Instead, the office was warm and almost uncomfortably luxurious. Dark wood paneling lined the walls, and bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes stretched toward the ceiling. A massive desk sat near the window, overlooking a courtyard garden that seemed impossibly green for the middle of the city. The air smelled of old paper and polished brass, and the carpet was so thick that Mia's footsteps made no sound at all.
She sat in a high-backed chair across from the lawyer, a thin man with silver hair and glasses perched on the end of his nose. His name was M
