All Chapters of HIS WILLING SECRET : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Japan was ten days. Tokyo first, then Kyoto, then three nights somewhere small near the coast that Alex had found by reading for two weeks before we left.I had expected him to work. He brought his laptop. He did not open it once.I had expected him to need the trip to be productive, to combine it with meetings, to justify it in practical language he used for everything. He did not schedule a single professional contact.We walked. We ate. We sat in gardens and at counters and by windows and did the specific nothing of two people who had nothing they needed to be except themselves.In Kyoto he stopped in the middle of a street to watch a cat sitting in a doorway and we stood there for an embarrassingly long time and it was one of the best moments of the trip.At dinner one evening, toward the end, he said: "I've been thinking about what I want the next five years to look like.""Tell me.""I want to run the firm well. I want to do good work. I want to see Jonah and Ada regularly." He

The criminal referral moved faster than either of us expected.Within a week, a detective named Soren had been assigned to the case. He was methodical, unhurried, and when he sat across from Alex in the conference room on a Friday afternoon he asked questions that told me he had read everything before he arrived.I was not in the meeting. But I was in the building, in a small room two doors down, and Alex debriefed me afterward in full."He already knows about Nolan," Alex said. "Not from us. From another investigation."I looked at him. "Nolan is already on their radar.""Apparently Nolan has been under surveillance for three months in connection with a separate corporate espionage case. Different firm, different client, same methodology. Credential theft, file access, data sale.""He's been doing this to other firms.""Yes. Morrison was not his only client." Alex sat back. "Soren thinks Morrison contracted Nolan through a third party specifically to maintain distance. But Nolan kept

The meeting happened on a Thursday evening in the firm's main conference room. Alex, Neil, three of the other senior partners, and the primary representative of the Morrison client family, a man named Tom Adler who was fifty, quiet, and had the particular stillness of someone who had been carrying grief for a long time.I was not in the room. But I was in the building, in the same small room as before, and Alex had agreed to debrief me in full afterward.The meeting ran two hours and forty minutes. Alex came out at 9:15pm and found me where I was sitting with a cold coffee and a book I had not been reading.He sat down. He looked like someone who had just come through something."Tell me," I said."Neil disclosed the Fenn situation himself," Alex said. "Before I could present it. He walked into the room and the first thing he said was that he had something to tell everyone, and he told them. The full story. His decision, his reasoning, his current view of whether it was right.""What

The Morrison pretrial process was slow and deliberate and designed by both sides to be as uncomfortable as possible for the other.Morrison's criminal team filed six pretrial motions in three weeks. Each one required a response. Each response required Alex's attention and Soren's coordination. The volume of it was the point. Wear the opposition down through paperwork.Alex handled it without visible strain. He had built a team around the case. Two of his best junior partners, a paralegal operation running full support, and Soren on the law enforcement side. He ran it the way he ran everything, with complete clarity about the structure and who was responsible for what.What he did not handle without strain was the subpoena.It arrived on a Tuesday. Not for him. For me.Morrison's defense team wanted my testimony regarding the approach by Ingrid Shaw. They wanted me under oath, in a deposition, answering questions about what was said in my office and whether my actions afterward constit

November became December and the Morrison case moved through its procedural stages with the particular patience that serious criminal cases required. Soren updated us every two weeks. Alex reported to his clients. The firm ran. Life ran alongside it.We went to Jonah's for Christmas.The drive was two hours through countryside that was cold and grey and bare in the way of a December that had not decided to be beautiful. Alex drove and I had the window down slightly because I liked cold air and he had stopped commenting on it six months ago. Progress.Jonah and Mara's house was a semi-detached on a quiet street with a garden that had a bird table and a very small snowman someone had built and abandoned. Ada met us at the door in a dinosaur costume that she refused to remove for the entire visit.She pointed at Alex immediately. "Ax," she said.He crouched down to her level, which was something I had watched him learn to do naturally over the visits of the last year. He did not perform