Historias cortas y novelas de Lawyer

I have a severe case of logorrhea. Only speaking makes me feel alive. My classmates all call me a freak, but Marvin Britt is the only one willing to listen to me. One day, I bring some homemade soup over to see him, only to catch him holding his junior's hand. "Lexie, your voice is so lovely, unlike my wife at home. She sounds like a squawking duck. It's exhausting." My hands shake so violently that I drop the thermal flask. The commotion angers a nearby madman, who forces a bottle of boiling water down my throat. With my mouth full of blood and blisters, I realize I need proof. I send Marvin—a lawyer—a frantic voice note to accompany me to the police station for evidence. Marvin shoots back a single word—"Noted". Of course. He doesn't even listen to it, as usual. He used to reply to everything I said with voice notes at least a minute long. But we hit the seven-year itch, and he's sick of my endless talking. Leaving the hospital, I stare at my diagnosis of permanent mutism and laugh bitterly. He must be thrilled. His world is finally quiet.

Sitting here in the courtroom, I watch as my father is put on trial for a crime he didn't commit. He gets a heart attack and dies right before my very eyes. There's nothing I can do to stop it. As my heart burns with anger and resentment, a series of comments suddenly appears, floating in the air in front of me. [Poor Mason! He still has no idea it was his own beloved girlfriend, Christa Lowry, who served as lead counsel and used falsified evidence to incriminate his father.] [Christa teamed up with that scion, Todd Harlow. She sacrificed Mason's dad's life to net her first pot of gold!] Through these comments, I learn the truth. I wipe my tears away, tear up the acceptance letter I just received from the top art school in the country, and throw myself into the legal profession. After 15 years, I've finally been crowned the Grim Reaper of the criminal defense world, having never lost a single case. One day, my assistant comes to my office with a pile of top-secret case files. Christa is facing the death penalty for engaging in international money laundering, and I'm the only one who can save her. In the surveillance footage from the detention center, the once arrogant woman is now kneeling on the floor, begging in despair to be saved. At that very moment, those comments start appearing in my vision again. [Spoiler alert! The most satisfying moment of revenge is about to come!] [That awful woman is so deluded. She thinks that just by offering enough money, Mason will be willing to save her for old times' sake! What a joke.] [Quick! Refuse her, Grim Reaper! Send her to hell!] Reading the comments, I smirk faintly before tossing my pen into the trash. "Tell her I won't take on the case."

I'm a family law attorney. My specialty is winning divorce cases for other people. I never imagined that one day, I'd be drafting my own divorce papers. For six years of marriage, Adrian read to me for ten minutes every night. He said it was our little marriage ritual. That was until I came home early from a business trip and heard his voice coming from my female neighbor’s apartment next door. "Vivi, which chapter do you want to hear tonight?" I stood outside her door, still holding the birthday cake I'd bought for him. I turned around, went home, opened my laptop, and went through our marital asset inventory from top to bottom. Later, Adrian knelt outside my law firm, his voice so hoarse it was barely recognizable. He said, "Serena, I was just helping her fall asleep. I never touched her." I set the voice recorder in front of him, and out came words he'd said himself. "She'll never leave me. She's too rational, which actually makes her the easiest to manipulate." I smiled. "Adrian, do you think the judge will find me easy to manipulate too?"

A former classmate of mine, Zack Lindell, is unlawfully fired by his company and denied a severance package. With nowhere else to turn, he becomes so desperate that he threatens to take his own life. I represent him entirely free of charge and run myself ragged until I secure a 500,000-dollar settlement for him. Yet on the day he receives the money, he comes to me with a 50-dollar parking receipt. "William, I drove my car that day, so I'll let the gas money slide, but the parking was because you had business at the courthouse, so that should be your expense, right?" Beside him, his wife, Helena Lindell, adds sarcastically, "I hear you big-shot corporate lawyers make insane money. Tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. You're not seriously going to stick us with a 50-dollar parking bill, are you?" As I watch the couple count their money, I lose whatever goodwill I still have toward them. I turn down an acquisition worth millions of dollars to handle his case, only to end up owing Zack 50 dollars for parking. I toss a hundred-dollar bill onto the table and block them. A year later, Zack sinks his life savings into a residential development that is never completed. When he can't find anyone willing to help him recover his money, he corners me with tears in his eyes. "William! Please, you have to help me! That money was everything we had." I have my assistant hand him a retainer agreement. "I can help you, but my consultation fees run at 5,000 dollars per hour, and my contingency fee is 30% of the total asset value. Those are my terms. Not a penny less."

The day I found out I was pregnant, my husband Dario Vitale's adopted sister Sofia pushed me down the stairs. I lost the baby. And I ended up in a coma. For five years while I slept, he punished her, tormented her, and made her pray for me every single day for five years. But the moment I woke up, everything had changed. Everything that was mine now had Sofia written all over it. My spot. My space. My place in his life. She'd taken over every last bit of it. When I confronted Dario, he didn't even realize how completely he'd already taken her side. "Camila, you're awake now. Sofia's spent five years paying for what she did—isn't that enough? Can we... let this go?" Five years. And in the end, he decided I'd forgiven her for him. The pain in my chest hurt worse than anything my body had been through. The man who used to look at me like I was his whole world—he wasn't there anymore. I called my sister Ayana. "Three days. I'm going back to the Manhattan firm. And I'm never seeing Dario again."

In the second year after I died, the psychopath who killed me was finally caught. The courtroom was packed on the day of the trial. Leo Mercer stood at the defense table in his orange jail uniform, humming to himself as if he didn't have a care in the world. The families of his seven known victims, grief-stricken and furious, demanded that prosecutors pursue an exception that would allow a death sentence. Leo's defense attorney, Nathan Reese, spoke evenly. "The purpose of the law is rehabilitation. Forgiveness is more powerful than killing. I oppose a death sentence for my client." Nathan's wife, Ada Reese, was also a prominent attorney. From the gallery, she declared, "Even criminals have human rights. How can we take someone's life just because he made a mistake? Besides, weren't the victims at least partly to blame? If they were decent women, why would he have chosen them?" Leo suddenly clapped his hands and burst out laughing. "Couldn't have said it better! To thank you, let me confess something. I didn't kill seven people. I killed eight." His eyes gleamed with excitement as he looked at the Reeses, his voice thick with amusement. "The eighth victim was your daughter. So remember what you just said, both of you. No death penalty for me."

My fiancée and my best friend were the top partners at a multi-million-dollar law firm, while I was just the guy handling the administrative work. In the courtroom, they were in perfect sync, trading fierce legal arguments and sharing an effortless dynamic. In their personal lives, they casually flirted through law jokes that only the two of them understood. I could never get a word in, edge-wise. Every time they laughed, I offered a painfully awkward smile. Even at my mother's funeral, nothing changed. They chatted merrily in front of her coffin, eventually breaking into audible laughter. “Clara, can you greet the guests?” I called out to her. I was the only child in the family, and as my fiancée, she was supposed to help me out with the funeral service. Anxious, I reached out to pull Clara forward, but she brushed my hand away. “Stop making a scene, Jack. Ethan and I are discussing something important.” Ethan just shrugged lightly. “Jack, it’s fine not to greet the guests. It's just a funeral service. Your mom's already gone, so who cares?” With that, the two of them jumped back into their legal discussion. The conversation grew so intense that they decided to head back to the office right then and there to pull court records. I was left standing frozen, my hands stiff in the air. In our three years together, I had been abandoned like this countless times. Gritting my teeth, I stepped up to greet the guests. Clara and Ethan paused for a second, startled. Then, they casually went right back to their conversation as if nothing had happened. Before my mom passed, she had praised what a good wife Clara would be in the future, but now it all felt like a sick joke. This empty, meaningless relationship had to end right now.

For eight years, Damian Caruso kept me as his secret wife. I handled his family's lawsuits, protected his empire, and raised the son he refused to acknowledge in public. Ethan wasn't even allowed to call him Dad when anyone else was around. I told myself Damian had his reasons. Until our son's seventh birthday. Damian promised he would come home. Ethan waited beside an untouched birthday cake until nearly midnight. Damian never showed. Because Sofia Bellini—the childhood friend everyone already treated as Damian's real woman—had the same birthday. And Damian had chosen hers. That night, I stopped waiting. I signed the divorce papers. The next morning, Damian was in such a hurry to rescue Sofia that he signed the documents I placed in front of him without even reading them. He didn't realize he had just given me permission to take Ethan out of New York. Then he moved Sofia into our home—and asked his wife and son to leave so she wouldn't discover we existed. Ethan looked at the father he had spent seven years trying to love and called him "Mr. Caruso." Damian finally looked shaken. But it was already too late. On the day we left, he told me he had to fly abroad to handle a divorce case for a client. I said nothing. Because that divorce case was mine. He was flying across the ocean to finalize the end of our marriage—and he still thought I was just taking our son out of town for a few days.

Dad's foreman is withholding his wages, leaving him no choice but to travel into the city to find a lawyer and file a lawsuit. Unfamiliar with how elevators work, he stubbornly climbs 20 flights of stairs before walking into the law firm, clutching a crumpled contract. "Clem, can you take a look at this? My boss owes us 120 grand. What should I do?" As the founder of Hawthorne Law Partners, Clement Hawthorne has fought cases for countless stray cats and dogs. Yet, right now, all he cares about is helping his law firm's newest intern, Reina Ellington, revise her graduation thesis. "120 grand isn't even enough to cover my retainer fee. I'm sorry, but I can't take this case." His cold, dismissive words cause Dad's back, which is already bent under the weight of steel and concrete, to slump even further. "I-In that case, I'll get out of your hair…" He slowly gathers his documents and stuffs them back into his canvas bag. When he turns to leave, even his footsteps carry a cautious, apologetic air. My nose stings, and tears well up in my eyes. I rise from my seat, ready to storm over and demand an explanation from Clement. However, Dad grasps my hand. "I'm fine, Cece. Clem has his principles. Don't hold it against him." The tears I've been keeping at bay finally spill over. I stand rooted to the spot, watching Dad's hunched figure shuffle toward the door, one agonizing step at a time. The moment the door closes behind him, I suddenly realize I no longer want to be part of Clement's family.

My father was a judge, but he fell in love with a killer. His lover ran my grandparents down with her car. He found her not guilty in court. At the time, his power was absolute. No one dared to go against him. That homewrecker lived in luxury and got whatever she asked for. My mother lost both her parents, suffered betrayal, and was driven mad by everyone's ridicule. Thirty years passed. I fought with everything I had and became a Supreme Court justice. During graduation season, I sat on the interview panel as presiding justice. Across from me was a poised, immaculate young woman. She was the finest graduate the law school had produced this year. Looking at that familiar face, I glanced down at the surname on her file. When I saw it, I froze. I stared at it for a long time. Then I raised my head and looked at the young woman who bore a faint resemblance to me. “We won’t be hiring you.”

For three years straight, my father had taken the whole family on a Christmas trip. This year, even my newly-engaged fiancé tagged along. Everyone except me. "Chloe, Legal's swamped at year-end. You'd better stay and work—keep an eye on the house for us while you're at it. We won't book a ticket or hotel for you." My father's excuse sounded perfectly reasonable. Beside him, my mother and sister were already chatting about the snow-capped Alps, not a flicker of doubt that anything was off. And my fiancé, Jack, was helping them load luggage, grinning as he said he'd be the perfect German translator for the trip. For three years, they'd always found a reason to leave me behind. And for three years, I'd caved. Not this time. I didn't argue. I just watched them drive off. The moment the car disappeared, I walked into HR and dropped my resignation. Half a month later, my family flew back—only to find themselves locked out of the apartment. Key cards were all disabled. Security guards from the company were blocking the entrance. My father called, over and over. I didn't pick up. I just sent one message: "I quit. The company took back the executive apartment. Oh, and the engagement's off too. Happy New Year!"

My mother, Dahlia Everson, falls seriously ill and has to undergo emergency treatment. The hospital has issued five critical condition notices for her. While fighting back tears, I call my wife, Nina Jeanes. I tell her, "Mom might not make it. Can you come and see her? She has always cared about you the most…" I hear only the sound of someone typing on the other end. After a long while, Nina finally replies, "Death comes for everyone. It's nothing. I have a court hearing tomorrow, so remember to get me breakfast from that restaurant I frequent." Her indifference makes my heart ache fiercely. After ten years of marriage, she remains as cold as ice. She's always this cold and detached, whether toward me or anyone else. Even when Mom is at death's door, she's thinking of tomorrow's breakfast as if the situation doesn't concern her at all. The only time she's ever shown any visible mood swing is when she had an miscarriage a few years ago. I saw her caressing her stomach sorrowfully in the bedroom. Back then, I naively assumed that she wasn't naturally apathetic but simply didn't know how to express herself. One day, I'm on the way home when I see her tussling with a restaurant owner's wife without a care for her image. She looks nothing like an elite lawyer. I hear her yell, "How do you have the nerve to betray Will when he treats you so well?" It's the first time in ten years that I've seen her looked completely unhinged. In that moment, I realize something—her coldness had always been reserved only for me.