Chapter 6 - The Counter-Attack
Lily was forced to move into a cheap, run-down motel on the bleak outskirts of the city. But desperation makes desperate people incredibly dangerous. Two days later, Naomi called me with an urgent, tense warning.
"Claire, we have a situation. Lily just hired Richard Vance—no relation to Ethan, but he is a notoriously dirty, highly aggressive divorce and estate lawyer. They are filing a massive countersuit. They're trying to invalidate your father's entire trust, claiming that you used 'undue influence' and psychological manipulation over him in his final, cancer-ridden days to write Lily out of the bulk of the inheritance."
I narrowed my eyes, looking out of my office window. "They're trying to play the victim card to the media."
"Exactly," Naomi said. "And because it involves a newborn baby, the media narrative is beginning to wobble. Some local daytime talk shows are questioning if you're being too harsh on a struggling single mother, regardless of her moral failings. We need to crush this before it ever steps foot in a public courtroom."
"Don't worry, Naomi," I said, a dark, dangerous smile spreading across my face. "My father was an incredibly meticulous businessman. He kept records of everything. Including Lily's... dark past. It's time to show the world who she really is."
I went down to the high-security basement of my estate, where my father’s old, heavy personal safe was kept. I unlocked it using his private code. Inside, resting beneath layers of corporate bonds, was an encrypted black flash drive labeled “In Case of Emergency.”
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My father had known about Lily’s unstable, highly manipulative nature long before Ethan ever entered our lives. The flash drive contained damning financial records showing that Lily had embezzled over $350,000 from my father's children's charity foundation to fund a secret, high-stakes gambling habit in her early twenties. Papa had covered it up back then to protect the family name, but he kept every shred of forensic proof as leverage to keep her from destroying herself.
It was time to pull back the curtain on my sister's saintly image once and for all.
