CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ETHAN
THE CONFERENCE ROOM gleamed like a cathedral built for the law. Black marble. Leather chairs. Shelves lined with case law. A bronze Lady Justice presided over it all, her scales catching the morning sunlight spilling through the windows.
Knox leaned back in his chair, one shoe hooked over the opposite knee, his sharp gaze fixed on me.
Rafa sat across from him, arms folded. Serena had already stacked two folders neatly in front of herself.
Eric and Katerina Romanov occupied the far side of the table, Caleb Myers beside them with the Cortez indictment open on his laptop.
Not everyone at the Marcelli Group sat at this table. Every employee knew the kind of clients we sometimes represented. Men and women whose names weren't merely printed in indictments but whispered in back rooms.
Knowing what we did didn't mean everyone had the stomach to participate in it. Rafa had once put it more succinctly. "You don't put house cats in a tiger fight."
Katerina Romanov was thirty-six, one of our senior associates and married to Laurel. She was a strategist through and through, with dark hair framing striking eyes that seemed permanently unimpressed by bullshit.
Caleb Myers was thirty-two, brilliant, autistic, and blunt enough to occasionally make grown attorneys question their life choices.
He also saw patterns the rest of us missed.
When Ruiz's financials had nearly buried us beneath contradictory numbers, Caleb had found the discrepancy everyone else overlooked.
Which was why he was here now. Ruiz was still consuming half the firm's manpower, and now Dominic Cortez loomed.
Rafa broke the silence first. "If we take this, we invite every enemy he's made into our orbit. Rivals. Families. Prosecutors who've spent years waiting for him to bleed."
Knox's mouth tilted. "Or we prove, once again, that the Marcelli Group doesn't cower because a client's name makes people uncomfortable. We've handled dangerous men before."
Eric flattened one palm against the table. "This isn't about prestige."
"No," I agreed. "It's about exposure."
Caleb spoke without looking up from his screen. "Count Seven is weak."
The room quieted. Serena turned toward him. "The arms conspiracy?"
"Yes." He enlarged a section of the indictment. "They rely heavily on an informant statement to establish the connection. The physical evidence described here doesn't independently support the breadth of the allegation."
He tapped the screen. "That's a pressure point."
Serena leaned closer. "Enough to matter?"
"Enough to investigate."
That was the answer I wanted. Not bravado or promises.
Something we could actually use. Katerina closed the file she'd been reading, pressing it flat with two fingers before setting it aside.
"If we take him, this will not stay one case for long." Her Russian cadence sharpened the warning.
“Well aware,” I replied as I looked around the table.
Knox with his shoe still hooked over his knee.
Rafa's arms still folded. Serena's pen hovering.
"Which is why nobody commits to anything today.
I'm meeting Cortez. That's it. We find out why he's replacing counsel, what he actually expects from us, and whether taking him creates more exposure than it's worth. "
"If it moves forward?" my sister asked.
"Then you and Caleb start mapping the indictment. Jurisdiction, timelines, discovery gaps, anything the government rushed."
Caleb was already typing, his eyes not leaving the screen. Rafa leaned forward, forearms on the marble.
"And if Cortez doesn't consider no an acceptable answer?"
I looked at him steadily. "Then today I find out whether Dominic Cortez is looking for representation or ownership."
The last of the room's levity left through whatever crack it could find. Exactly where I wanted it. A few minutes later, chairs scraped back, and the meeting broke apart.
Katerina snapped her folder shut and rose. "I'll meet you downstairs at eleven fifteen."
"Eric's coming too."
She nodded once, already moving, following Caleb who was already halfway through the door, notebook tucked beneath one arm, jacket slightly askew.
Knox called after him, "Fantastic meeting, Caleb. Always enjoy the warmth."
Caleb stopped in the doorway. Turned, one hand still on the frame. "I contributed four times."
Then he left. Rafa stared after him, something almost paternal crossing his face. "I fucking love that guy."
Despite myself, I laughed. Serena waited until the door clicked shut then focused her full attention on me.
"What did Julia say?"
"Meet Cortez first. Find out what he's really asking us to step into. Then decide."
Rafa nodded slowly, but before he could speak, ,my phone buzzed and my father’s name flashed across the screen. I answered and put him on speaker.
"Figlio mio." My father's warm baritone filled the room. "I hear Ruiz is moving smoother than expected. Saint hasn’t intervened yet so that is a good sign."
Saint Ruiz, the heir and all around pain in my fucking ass son of Ruiz Senior. He always had an opinion and there’d been a few times early on I wanted to tell him since he knew everything, why didn’t he go to law school?
"So far,” I replied simply.
"Good, but Ruiz isn't why I'm calling."
The remaining conversation in the room died. "I've been asking about Cortez since you brought him."
I straightened. "You're on speaker. Serena's here."
"Principessa,” he greeted warmly.
"Morning, Papà. What can you tell us?”
"I know Cortez in passing. Enough to tell you that man does not send his family knocking on another lawyer's door unless the ground beneath him is collapsing. My people are still asking questions," he continued. "Until I know more, assume he's already inside your house.”
That was the kind of cryptic shit my father enjoyed saying when he wanted everyone in a room paranoid. I needed information.
"Anything specific?"
"Nothing I'll discuss on this line. We speak Sunday."
"Fine,” I reluctantly agreed.
"And Ethan?" he called softly.
"Yeah?"
"Do not let wanting the case make you decide you understand the case."
My jaw tightened. "I know."
The line went dead, and Rafa gave me an irritatingly amused look. "Still getting parental lectures at your age."
"Fuck off."
My phone buzzed again with a text message this time.
Julia. I typed a quick response telling her I'd call as soon as I was free, then checked my watch.
There wasn't much left to debate. Knox and Rafa had two other cases demanding their attention, so they were staying behind.
Serena was staying too. She would've handled Cortez without blinking, but there was no reason to drag another partner away from the firm for an initial meeting.
Katerina had volunteered strongly enough that arguing would've wasted both our time, and Eric went where I went.
An hour later, the three of us were headed north. Whatever waited on the other side of that prison glass, I doubted it would be simple.
I just didn’t know yet how complicated it was about to become.
THE DRIVE FROM THE airport to Coleman felt longer than it was.
The rental car’s air conditioning hummed unevenly, pushing out a dry chill that did little against the glare off the highway.
Florida thinned around us, palmetto scrub and skeletal pines giving way to wire fencing and heat-shimmered asphalt.
Then the federal complex rose ahead, a geometry of concrete and razor wire under a flat white sky, watchtowers standing silent and angular against the haze.
Katerina sat in the back, her dark hair pulled into a severe bun, her gaze fixed ahead as if already cross-examining the walls.
Eric rode shotgun, the Cortez file open across his lap, fingers tracing columns of text he’d likely already committed to memory.
Eric didn’t enter rooms unless he could predict at least three ways they might go wrong.
We parked in a lot bleached bare by sun, then walked toward the entrance under the weight of the humidity. The temperature dropped the moment the doors shut behind us—institutional cold, smelling of antiseptic and stale air.
Processing was familiar. IDs laid on the counter, belts removed, watches slipped into trays.
Our phones were powered down and locked away.
Legal binders flipped through by bored hands.
The metal detector buzzed once at my cufflinks.
I handed them over without comment. Katerina moved through it all unflustered.
She’d argued before tougher audiences than a corrections officer.
Eric’s posture never changed—calm, ready.
Another checkpoint deeper in. An officer with keys jangling at his hip led us through a series of gates. Each one clanged shut behind us with a sound like verdicts being sealed—metal meeting metal, final and unforgiving.
The attorney meeting room was bare by design. A steel table was bolted to the floor, chairs that didn’t scoot, walls the color of dust. A camera watched from high in one corner, its red eye unblinking.
Dominic Cortez arrived several minutes later, and somehow, prison hadn’t diminished him.
He moved like he still owned the room—broad-shouldered, thick-necked, his khaki uniform stretched taut across his chest and biceps.
Well-groomed dark hair, silver-tipped, fell across his forehead.
Tattoos coiled like shadows beneath his rolled-up sleeves.
Then he smiled—a gold-capped grin, diamonds glinting cold under the fluorescents.
His gaze slid from me to Eric, then settled on Katerina. It lingered there, assessing. I shifted my weight just enough to break his sight line without making a show of it. His grin deepened.
"Senor Marcelli."
"Mr. Cortez,” I greeted coolly.
"They tell me you're the man who wins the unwinnable."
"They tell people lots of things."
His laugh came low and rough. "Please. Dominic."
"I'll stick with Mr. Cortez."