Chapter 6 - The War of the Roses
Two weeks later, the war escalated from skirmishes to full-scale carpet bombing.
Eleanor Whitfield arrived in Austin not in a Cadillac, but via an entire floor reserved at the Commodore Perry Estate in central Austin.
With her came four attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell’s New York office, led by a ruthless litigator named Douglas Sterling—a man whose legal tactics had once been described in *The Wall Street Journal* as "scorched-earth corporate warfare applied to human beings."
Their first filing was an emergency motion to void Texas jurisdiction, accompanied by an affidavit signed by Dr. Henderson in Connecticut alleging that my flight to Austin at thirty-five weeks constituted "gross medical negligence and reckless endangerment of a high-risk pregnancy."
Sarah Chen called me into her office on a Friday afternoon. Lila was twelve days old, tucked against my chest in a soft linen wrap, sleeping soundly to the steady beat of my heart.
"They're going for blood, Emma," Sarah said, sliding the seventy-page motion across the desk. "They aren't just asking for joint custody. Eleanor is financing a petition for *sole temporary custody* to Alexander, with supervised visitation for you, citing postpartum mental instability and maternal endangerment."
Maggie, sitting in the armchair next to me, let out a violent curse. "She had the baby naturally with zero complications! Her Apgar score was eight! How the hell is that endangerment?"
"It doesn't have to be true," Sarah said calmly, her jade bracelet clicking against the desk. "It just has to create enough judicial doubt to force an evidentiary hearing before Judge Martinez next Tuesday. In the meantime, they’re digging into your past. They’ve subpoenaed your employment records from the arts foundation. They’ve interviewed your former landlord in Brooklyn. They’re looking for anything—a bounced check from seven years ago, a prescription for an antidepressant, an old college boyfriend who will say you were dramatic."
"I don't have anything to hide," I said, my voice shaking with rage.
"It doesn't matter what you have to hide; it matters how Douglas Sterling spins it," Sarah countered. "Eleanor Whitfield has spent fifty years manipulating social boards, cultural trusts, and political appointments. She views this court proceeding as an hostile takeover. If she can make you look unstable, she wins."
"And Alexander?" I asked, my throat tight. "Did he sign this affidavit?"
Sarah looked at me with a strange, cautious expression. She pulled a single sheet of paper from the back of the file.
"No," Sarah said.
I blinked. "What do you mean, no?"
"The petition was filed on Alexander’s behalf by Eleanor as the designated trustee of the Whitfield Family Trust, which technically holds the power of attorney over certain family legal actions under their trust structure," Sarah explained, tapping the paper. "Alexander refused to sign the medical endangerment affidavit. Douglas Sterling filed a supplemental declaration stating that Alexander is 'temporarily unavailable due to acute personal distress.'"
"He’s hiding behind his mother’s skirts," Maggie spat.
"No," Sarah said quietly, looking at me. "He’s fighting her. My sources in New York tell me there was a screaming match in the boardroom at Vance & Associates two days ago. Alexander threatened to fire Douglas Sterling. Eleanor told him that if he interfered with the legal strategy, the trust would remove him as managing director of the firm."
I looked down at Lila’s tiny face. Her eyelashes were long and dark, resting against cheeks that were already filling out with healthy, milk-fed plumpness.
Alexander was caught in the meat grinder of his own creation. He had lived his life inside that gilded machine, enjoying its privileges, its power, its unyielding protection. And now that he wanted to be human, the machine was grinding him up along with me.
"What do we do on Tuesday?" I asked Sarah.
Sarah leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with cold satisfaction.
"We don't play defense, Emma. We drop the nuclear option."
"The screenshots?"
"Not just the screenshots of Victoria," Sarah said, pulling a thumb drive from her desk drawer. "Yesterday afternoon, I received an anonymous courier package from Manhattan. Inside was an external hard drive containing the financial audit of the Whitfield offshore holdings in the Cayman Islands—specifically, the accounts Alexander used to finance Victoria Hale’s art gallery in Paris three years ago."
I stared at the thumb drive. My blood ran cold. "Who sent that?"
Sarah smiled—a slow, terrifying smile.
May you like
"Alexander’s personal assistant of eight years," Sarah said softly. "Her name is Clara. She sent a note with it that said: *For Emma and the baby. Don't let Eleanor win.*"
***
