He couldn’t get me to the hospital, so he was bringing his corrupt doctor to me. Reed would arrive, find me alone, confused, and agitated from the night’s events. He would perform a “preliminary exam” in my living room and then testify at 8:00 a.m. that I was a danger to myself and my $60 million estate.
He was moving the battlefield from the hospital—which he had lost—to my home, which he thought he controlled.
I had to give him the performance of his life.
“No!” I shouted into the phone, a high-pitched, paranoid wail. “No doctors! I’m not…I’m not sick. I don’t need a doctor, Ryan. I’m fine. I’m just tired. Why are you doing this?”
I gave him exactly the symptoms he was paying for. I gave him the erratic behavior his petition required.
“I can hear yourself, Dad,” he said, trying to soothe me. “You’re yelling. You’re not making sense. This is exactly what Dr. Reed warned me about. This is the confusion. Please, Dad, just go home. I know you’re scared, but just go home and let the doctor talk to you. Do it for Emily.”
I looked across the desk at Wright. He was watching me, his expression unreadable but his eyes alive, analytical. He was enjoying this.
I let out a long, shuddering sob, a broken sound torn from the throat of a man who had lost everything.
“Oh God. Oh God. A doctor at the house. Laura, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know…”
I was giving him a masterpiece of senile panic.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Ryan said, his voice now a venomous, comforting coo—the voice of a snake lulling its prey. “Everything’s going to be okay. You just need help. We’re going to get you help. Just go home. I’ll meet you and Dr. Reed there in thirty minutes. We’ll sort this all out. We’ll take care of you.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my voice sounding small and defeated. “Okay, son. Help. Yes. I…I need help. I’ll…I’ll go home. I’m on my way.”
I hung up. The line went dead.
The silence in Wright’s office was absolute, a heavy velvet curtain.
I looked at Wright. He hadn’t moved. The cold, thin smile on his face was the only thing in the room that seemed alive.
“He’s a good liar,” I said. My voice was instantly back to normal, cold, steady, sharp.
“He’s a desperate liar,” Wright corrected, standing up and closing his briefcase with a heavy, final click. “He just confirmed his entire plan. He’s sending his star witness, the corrupt doctor, to your house to manufacture evidence for a hearing he doesn’t know we know about.”
Wright checked his platinum watch.
“6:45 a.m. He thinks he has you trapped, Peter. He thinks you’re a scared old man running home to hide, about to be cornered in your own living room by his medical expert.”
I stood up and straightened my tie. The fatigue was gone. The adrenaline was back, clean and sharp as glass.
“So, what’s our move?”
Wright picked up his briefcase. He walked to the door and held it open for me, the lights of the empty hallway gleaming on the marble floor.
“A good trap,” Wright said, his smile all teeth. “Let them go to your house. Let them wait. Let Dr. Reed ring the doorbell of an empty home for the next hour, wondering where his confused patient is. Let them panic.”
“And where will we be?” I asked, walking past him into the hall.
Wright’s voice echoed in the empty corridor as we walked toward the elevator.
“We, Peter—we have a hearing to attend. Courtroom 3B, 8:00 a.m. sharp. And we,” he said, pressing the elevator button, “are going to be early. 7:45 a.m.”
The fluorescent lights of the county courthouse hallway hummed, casting a sick greenish glow on the cheap linoleum floors. The air smelled of stale coffee and old floor wax. There was a faded framed picture of the American flag by the clerk’s window and a bulletin board covered in jury duty notices.
This wasn’t my world. My world was boardroom negotiations and international contracts, conference calls with Tokyo at midnight and Zurich at dawn. This was a place of petty squabbles and family betrayals. It felt dirty.
Mr. Wright and I stood at the end of the hall, just watching the door to Courtroom 3B. We were early.
They were earlier.
Through the small wire-mesh window in the door, I could see them—my family, my executioners.
Ryan was pacing. He was wearing his best suit, a dark charcoal wool that I probably paid for, but he looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin pale and clammy. The stress and adrenaline from the night’s disaster were rolling off him in waves. He was a man who had gambled everything and was desperate to see the final card.
Next to him was his lawyer, a young, slick man in a suit that was too shiny, his hair slicked back with too much gel. He looked like he’d gotten his law degree from a late-night television commercial.
And then there was Dr. Reed.
