For six years, I cared for eighty-two-year-old Mrs. Sun-Hee Choi in her Richmond District apartment in San Francisco, refusing every envelope of cash she handed me.
The air in the San Francisco Superior Court clerk’s office was thick with the scent of stale coffee and old paper. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a pallid glow on the piles of documents stacked on every surface. I stood beside Arthur Pendelton, who was calmly, meticulously reviewing a folder of new filings from Oakes’s side.
Across the counter stood Grace Min, Master Oakes’s paralegal. She was a young woman, probably only a few years older than me, dressed in an ill-fitting suit. She looked nervous, her brow furrowed, as she sorted through her own stacks of documents. She kept glancing at her watch, clearly flustered by the mounting deadlines.
“Mr. Pendelton, we simply cannot produce these discovery documents by the end of the week,” Grace said, her voice high-pitched and strained. “The volume of Oakes’s personal financial records requested is—”
Pendelton cut her off, his tone firm. “Ms. Min, your firm was granted an extension last week. My client’s assets are currently frozen, his immigration status is under review, and his good name is being slandered. We need these disclosures.”
Grace’s hands fluttered through her papers. She was clearly under immense pressure, probably from Oakes himself.
“But Master Oakes is just trying to—” she started, then stopped herself, biting her lip. Her eyes darted to me, then quickly away.
“Trying to what, Ms. Min?” Pendelton prompted, his voice calm, but with an underlying edge.
Grace took a deep, shaky breath. She seemed on the verge of tears. Her gaze landed on a specific document, a foreign-looking legal form that had slipped out of a folder. Her eyes widened in panic.
“Master Oakes didn’t file the injunction to take the money,” she blurted out, her voice barely above a whisper, but clear as a bell in the echoing room. “He filed it to block the Seoul syndicate before their foreign lien attaches!”
The words hung in the air, electric and shocking.
Grace’s eyes instantly snapped wide open, realizing what she had said. Her hand flew to her mouth, her fingers pressing hard against her lips as if to stuff the words back in. Her face went pale.
Pendelton and I exchanged a stunned glance. The Seoul syndicate. Their foreign lien.
Grace didn’t wait. Her hands scrambled to scoop up her folders, almost knocking over a stack of files belonging to another lawyer. “I—I have to go,” she stammered, her voice choked. “Emergency meeting. My apologies.”
She practically ran out of the clerk’s office, leaving a faint scent of fear in her wake. The clerk behind the counter, who had been idly stamping documents, looked up with a curious expression, then shrugged and returned to her task.
The revelation hit me with the force of a physical blow. Oakes wasn’t trying to steal the money. He was trying to protect it. He was playing the villain, orchestrating this entire legal war, not for greed, but to “block the Seoul syndicate.”
Every piece of the puzzle—his payment of Min-Jae’s debts five years ago, his aggressive tactics, the fabricated dementia claims—suddenly clicked into a new, terrifying alignment. But why the elaborate deception? Why make himself the enemy? Why put me through all this?
Pendelton, usually so stoic, slowly turned to me, his eyes wide. “The foreign lien,” he murmured, almost to himself. “We need to check international probate filings. Now.”
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