Your career in this firm ends the moment Arthur Davenport dies, Clara, my senior co-manager Marcus whispered, dropping a 200-page termination clause onto my desk.
Marcus’s eyes had locked onto the wax-sealed document in my hands. His jaw tightened as he stepped deeper into the room.
“Whatever legal trick Ross is trying to pull won’t hold up in court,” Marcus had said, his voice laced with venom. “Arthur Davenport was mentally incapacitated for thirty-six months. Any document signed during that period is null and void.”
“This proxy was drafted four years ago, Marcus,” Attorney Ross had stated calmly, stepping between us. “Before your certified auditor declared him unfit.”
Marcus didn’t argue further with Ross. Instead, he turned on his heel, pulled out his smartphone, and made a series of rapid-fire calls.
The first call went to Arthur’s estranged sister, Beatrice Davenport. The second, to her broke, gambling-addicted son, Julian.
Within two hours, Marcus escalated the conflict beyond the firm’s walls, directly into the public legal arena.
By mid-afternoon, Beatrice and Julian filed an emergency petition in Cook County Chancery Court. Their claim was that I, Clara Lin, had exerted undue influence over an infirm elderly man to hijack his rightful financial legacy.
“She was just a glorified assistant hired to monitor his medication,” Beatrice declared to a scrum of reporters outside the courthouse. Her voice, amplified by Marcus’s pre-arranged PR, dripped with indignant family pride. “We will not allow an outsider with a questionable background to dismantle our family’s company.”
I stood in the building lobby, watching the news broadcast on the sleek wall monitor. The screen showed Beatrice, then Julian, then a blurred image of my own face.
The security guards, who had only moments ago been waiting outside my office, now flanked me. They escorted me not to my car, but past the main elevators and towards a rarely used service exit.
My name, once a respected part of Davenport Capital, was now being publicly smeared, just as Marcus had planned.
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