CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #3
“You don’t dictate staffing at my firm. If we represent you, I decide who touches your case. Not you.”
“She is my blood.” His voice trembled with quiet conviction and that made me all the more suspicious. Nothing about Lila would have ever made me believe she was related to this man and if she was, that led to a whole other set of problems.
I didn’t know if Lila was working for him, if she’d been manipulated, or if Cortez had woven a lie to protect himself. I didn’t know whether her role at the Marcelli Group was a coincidence or a conduit for his secrets.
Facts first.
Then accusations.
“Then you should’ve considered what that meant before allowing her to build a career inside a firm you might one day need.”
His charm drained away, revealing sharp angles in his face. For the first time, I saw the steel beneath the veneer.
“Careful, Marcelli.”
Eric shifted and crossed his arms. “If you’re trying to intimidate us into representing you, you’ve already made the decision considerably easier.”
A tense silence swallowed the room. Cortez leaned back, folding one hand across his stomach, his smile gradually returning.
“Review the files.”
“I intend to.” I rose, smoothing the front of my jacket and turning toward the door.
“One more thing.” His voice stopped me in the doorway. I looked back. His eyes bored into mine. “Lila cannot know I told you.”
The words landed like a hammer blow. Now we had a real problem. I realized
“We’ll be in touch.”
I closed the door behind us, leaving Cortez’s quiet confidence to echo in the now-empty room.
The electronic lock buzzed.
The door opened.
Eric and Katerina followed me into the corridor.
None of us spoke until steel slammed shut behind us.
Then Eric looked at me.
"He waited until the meeting was over to tell us. That was deliberate."
"I told him I wouldn't tolerate being blindsided."
Eric's mouth twisted. "And he blindsided you anyway."
I rubbed my thumb along my jaw.
That was what bothered me.
Not simply that Lila was his daughter.
That he'd waited.
He'd watched me conduct an entire meeting without one of the most relevant pieces of information on the table, then handed it over when I was already standing to leave.
A demonstration.
Dominic Cortez wanted me to understand that he controlled information.
Fine.
Now I understood.
Katerina closed her notebook.
"We need to be careful about what we assume."
My gaze shifted toward her.
She continued. "He claims Lila knows things. He also admitted she does not know he intends to put her on his defense. Those are not the same thing."
"No," Eric agreed. "They're not."
That distinction mattered.
Lila had crossed professional boundaries with me. That was fact.
She'd made Julia uncomfortable.
Fact.
Her behavior had already been enough for me to decide she no longer belonged at the Marcelli Group.
Also fact.
Her being Dominic Cortez's daughter changed the landscape.
It didn't magically tell me what she knew.
Or whether she'd done anything for him.
Katerina exhaled through her nose. "We need to find out whether he's telling the truth.”
“Quietly,” I agreed. Nobody contacts Marino. Nobody tips her off. And nobody assumes she's involved until we have evidence that says she is."
I pulled out my phone.
First, I texted the group we'd assembled for the Cortez review.
Conference room when we get back. ASAP.
Then Julia.
We need to talk tonight. Just left Coleman.
Her response appeared almost immediately.
We need to talk tonight.
My phone rang before I could decide whether that coincidence was funny or terrifying.
Julia's face filled the screen, a picture I'd taken on Sanibel Island last winter. Her hair had been everywhere from the wind, and she'd threatened to throw my phone into the Gulf if I didn't stop taking pictures of her.
I answered.
"Should I laugh or be afraid we sent the same message?" she asked.
Despite everything, the sound of her voice loosened something in my chest.
"Probably both."
"That good, huh?"
"Meeting didn't go the way I expected."
There was a pause.
"Bad?"
"Complicated."
I wasn't discussing Cortez's disclosure over the phone, especially before I knew precisely where privilege began and ended.
"I'll be home early tonight," I told her. "We'll talk then. You can tell me why you apparently had the same shitty idea."
"Deal."
Another small pause.
"Love you."
My eyes closed briefly.
"I love you too, bella."
I ended the call and stared at her picture for another second before locking my phone.
"Julia might be able to find out more, discreetly,” Eric suggested.
That was not happening. “Julia has no reason to be involved in this. Her playing field is our daughters' school lunches, meeting with her girlfriends, painting. Not this.”
Eric’s mouth tightened. “You make her sound like some fancy housewife. That isn’t Julia at all.”
I didn’t respond to that. His opinion didn’t matter. I was not involving my wife in what was shaping up to be a clusterfuck. I'd entered Coleman thinking Dominic Cortez might bring danger to my firm.
I hadn't expected to discover he'd already planted a question inside it.