Chapter 4
THE ALLY
Dominic Voss is not what I expected.
I’d pictured someone older. Silver-haired, heavy, the kind of attorney who wears his authority in his jowls and his billing rate in his cufflinks. Maren said he doesn’t grandstand, he doesn’t bluff, he just wins, and I’d built a whole person around that—sixty, imposing, a courtroom general.
The man who stands to greet me in the glass-walled office on the thirty-second floor of a LaSalle Street tower is maybe forty.
Tall—taller than Grant—with dark hair, a jaw that belongs in GQ, and shoulders that strain the seams of a suit that cost a fortune.
Charcoal wool, impeccable cut, the fabric doing exactly what expensive fabric does across a body that clearly sees the inside of a gym five days a week.
His shirt is white. His tie is slate. His cuffs are buttoned—not linked, buttoned—and his watch is understated in a way that means it’s very, very good.
He is devastatingly handsome, and I am sitting across from him with a folder full of evidence that my husband is fucking my grandmother’s nurse, and the absurdity of being turned on by this man right now is not lost on me.
“Mrs. Petersson.” He extends his hand. His grip is firm, brief, professional. “Sit down. Tell me why you’re here.”
No small talk. No how are you or can I get you a coffee. Just the chair, the desk, the question. I set the folder between us and open it.
“I want to start whatever needs to happen to divorce my husband. He’s cheating on me, and he’s lying to my grandmother to coerce her into giving him my inheritance.”
His expression doesn’t change. “How much is the estate worth?”
“A hundred and twenty-five million.”
Now it changes—not shock, not greed. A sharpening. Like a lens clicking into focus.
“Start with the affair,” he says.
I pull out the photograph. Slide it across the desk. “Two days ago. My grandmother’s house. Her study. That’s my husband, and that’s Sienna—my grandmother’s live-in nurse.”
He picks it up. Studies it. Sets it down. “How long has the nurse been in the home?”
“Nine months.”
“And the affair?”
“At least eight, based on the texts.” I pull the screenshots—forty-seven pages, printed in sequence, timestamped. “This is from his laptop. iMessage sync. The thread goes back eight months. It starts as an affair and turns into a conspiracy.”
“A conspiracy to do what?”
“To change my grandmother’s will. To replace my power of attorney with one naming Grant. To systematically poison my grandmother against me so the changes feel like her idea.”
I say it flat. No emotion. The facts in a line, like Dominic asked for them. His eyes move from me to the stack of printouts, and he starts reading.
This is where Grant would nod and say that’s a lot, babe and check his phone. Dominic reads. Actually reads—his index finger tracking down the margin, pausing at entries, his jaw doing a thing I’m starting to recognize. Not clenching. Tightening. A cable taking weight.
“They scripted the manipulation,” he says, still reading. Not looking up. “‘Tell her Nora forgot to call again.’ ‘Done. She got quiet after.’“ He flips a page. “‘I told her Nora thinks the house should be sold.’ ‘Perfect. That’ll scare her.’“
He sets the page down. Looks at me. “Did you ever tell your grandmother you wanted to sell her house?”
“Never. I would never say that. The house is—“ My throat tightens. “That home has been in our family for generations. It’s legacy.”
“So the nurse is fabricating statements and attributing them to you, with your husband coordinating the content and timing.”
“Yes.”
“How often does your husband visit your grandmother?”
“Weekly. Flowers, conversation, the whole performance. He told her he comes because he loves her. She told me he’s a good man.
” My voice is steady but my nails are digging into my palms under the desk.
“She used to hold my hand when I visited. Now she pats my arm and pulls away. She wouldn’t open a box of macarons I brought her until Sienna was there to share them.
She cut me off mid-sentence to talk to Sienna about roses.
He tells me he only visits her occasionally, and when I asked the last time he visited, he lied to me. ”
He’s writing now—not typing, writing, in a leather-bound notebook with clean handwriting. Each detail on its own line. The pen moves and I keep going.
“Nine months ago, Gran would have opened that box of macarons before I finished the sentence. She would have picked one with the deliberation of a jeweler, closed her eyes, and told me I was an angel. Now she looks at me like I’m—“ I stop. Breathe. “Like I’m an unwanted guest. I never understood why she changed.”
Dominic sets his pen down. “That’s strong testimony.
The behavioral shift in your grandmother corroborates the manipulation documented in their own messages.
This is an undue influence case—elder financial abuse.
It’s a separate cause of action from the divorce, and based on what you’re showing me, it’s strong. ”
“There’s more.” I pull the will amendment from the folder. “I found this in his office. A draft—or maybe a copy. I don’t know if it’s been signed.”
He reads the first line and goes still. His eyes track across the page, down, across again. I watch his face because I want to see what happens when someone who understands this language reads what Grant is trying to do.
“‘My doting son-in-law,’“ he reads aloud, toneless. “‘Who has been a devoted and loving presence in my final years.’ Everything to Grant. The full estate.” He looks up. “The nurse isn’t named.”
“No.”
“She’s doing the daily work—the whisper campaign, the emotional manipulation, the document signing—and he’s cut her out of the payout entirely.”
“He’s conning the woman who’s helping him con my grandmother. She hasn’t even read what their lawyer is preparing for my grandmother to sign.”
Something moves behind his eyes. A flash—there and gone, pulled back behind the professional mask so fast I almost miss it.
But I don’t miss it. It’s anger. Not performance, not posturing.
The real thing, hot and sharp, the kind that makes a man’s hands go still because the alternative is slamming them on the desk.
“Both documents were prepared by Philip Keene,” he says.
His voice hasn’t changed. His hand is flat on the will amendment, pressing it against the desk.
“The same attorney filed the replacement POA.” He flips back to the filing.
“I don’t know him. He’s not on my radar, which is unusual for this level of estate work in this city.
” He writes the name in his notebook. Underlines it. “I’ll look into him.”
He sets his pen down and squares the documents in front of him.
“Regardless of who drafted these, the manipulation of your grandmother is its own cause of action. Elder financial abuse. Even if the amendment and the POA hold up, the undue influence case is strong on its own. What I need from you is a written timeline. Every visit, every behavioral change, every incident where your grandmother’s demeanor shifted. Dates. Details. The pattern matters.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.” He pauses. Leans back. And something shifts in his expression—more deliberate. A decision being made. “Nora, at this point I think we need to tell your grandmother what’s happening.”
My whole body goes rigid. “No.”
“She’s being manipulated in her own home by two people she—“
“I know exactly what’s happening in her home.
” The words come out sharp enough to cut.
“I also know what happens if we tell her. She’s ninety-one.
The woman who makes her ginger broth and rubs her feet and calls her sweetheart is the woman she trusts.
If we tell Gran, she tells Sienna—not out of betrayal, out of confusion.
Sienna calls Grant. Grant destroys the laptop, shreds the documents, and moves the whole timeline up.
And then I have a devastated grandmother and a case built on screenshots a defense attorney will call fabricated. ”
“The alternative is leaving her in that house with—“
“I am aware.” My hands are gripping the arms of the chair.
“Don’t explain my grandmother’s situation to me.
I held her hand through a hip replacement.
I organized her medications for two years before Sienna existed.
I am the person who noticed something was wrong before I had a single piece of evidence, because I know her.
I know what her love feels like, and I know what it feels like when someone takes it away. ”
The silence between us could draw blood.
Dominic doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t lean back.
Doesn’t do the thing Grant would do—soften, deflect, tell me what I want to hear so the tension dissolves.
He holds his position and I hold mine and the brass clock on his desk ticks between us like a slow heartbeat.
“Every day we wait,” he says, quiet and precise, “is a day they’re whispering in her ear.”
“Every day they don’t know I’m coming is a day they’re not covering their tracks.”
His jaw shifts. He looks at the screenshots spread across his desk—the campaign, the scripts, the systematic dismantling of everything between me and the person I love most—and I can see him weighing it. The attorney in him against something else.
“I don’t like it,” he says.
“You don’t have to like it. You have to win.”
A beat. He picks up his pen. Writes something in the notebook. “Get me the timeline this week. Once I have it, I’ll file. In the meantime, nothing changes at home.”
“Fine.”
“But I want you to understand—your grandmother’s wellbeing is not negotiable. If at any point I believe she’s in immediate danger, I will act. With or without your agreement.”
A man I met thirty minutes ago just told me he’ll override me to protect my grandmother. Grant would never say that. Grant would tell me whatever I wanted to hear and do whatever served Grant.
“Understood,” I say.
He slides a business card across the desk. “Rachel Kovac. Family law. High-asset divorces. Tell her I referred you. Retain her this week—the divorce and the elder abuse cases are separate proceedings, but they’ll intersect, and Rachel and I coordinate well.”
I pick up the card. Cream stock, clean type. Another piece clicking into place.
He stands. “And Nora—don’t tell your husband what you’re doing. If your husband suspects anything, I need to know immediately.”
The elevator drops me thirty-two floors with a divorce attorney’s business card in one hand and my phone in the other.
I step into the lobby and dial Rachel Kovac’s number.