Chapter 5 - The Trap is Set
By the middle of January, winter had tightened its grip on New England. A bitter, endless frost had settled over Providence.
Andrew Collins sat inside the cramped, smoke-stained living room of his mother’s tiny two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city. The apartment smelled of stale tea and damp carpets—a far cry from the multi-million-dollar luxury of Oakridge Estates.
Vanessa Reed sat across from him on an old velvet armchair, her luxury luggage stacked against the wall. The glamour that had defined her weeks earlier had completely vanished. Her roots were showing, her nails were unmanicured, and her eyes were filled with simmering rage.
“I can’t live like this, Andrew!” Vanessa yelled, slapping her hand against the armrest. “Your mother’s apartment is hideous! My credit card was declined at the salon today because your shell company account was frozen by the court!”
“Do you think I want to be here?!” Andrew roared back, his face gaunt, dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes. He hadn't shaved in four days. “The firm suspended me! They’re doing a internal audit on my expense reports! My lawyer costs eight hundred dollars an hour, and I had to borrow money from my uncle just to pay the retainer!”
Margaret came walking out of the kitchen, holding a plate of burnt toast, looking frail and aged. “Andrew, calm down. Richard Thorne said he has a strategy for the preliminary hearing next week. He said if we can prove Hannah was mentally incompetent during the marriage, the judge will throw out the trust clause.”
“How are we going to prove that, Mom?!” Andrew snapped, running his hands through his unwashed hair. “She spent six years sitting at home taking care of Lily! She doesn't have a psychiatric record!”
“She will,” a sharp, raspy voice came from the doorway.
Richard Thorne, a barrel-chested lawyer with slicked-back grey hair and a expensive Italian suit that looked out of place in the dreary apartment, walked in without knocking.
“Mr. Thorne,” Andrew stood up quickly. “Did you talk to the prosecutor?”
“The prosecutor isn't dropping the fraud charges, Andrew,” Thorne said coldly, sitting down on a wooden dining chair. “The camera footage from your neighbor is a total disaster for us. Judges don't like seeing a guy holding a glass of scotch while his baby freezes in a snowbank. It makes you look like a monster.”
“I was framed by the camera angle!” Andrew yelled defensively.
“Shut up and listen,” Thorne snapped. “We aren't going to win on the optics of that night. We have to pivot. We need to attack her character before the custody evaluation next week.”
“How?” Vanessa asked eagerly.
Thorne pulled a legal pad from his coat. “I spoke with a private investigator I employ. Hannah worked at a public relations firm in Boston eight years ago before she married you, right?”
“Yes,” Andrew said. “She resigned when we got married.”
“She didn't just resign,” Thorne grinned wolfishly. “My investigator found an old internal memo from her former employer. There was a dispute over a missing client expense account. It was resolved internally without police involvement, but Hannah left the firm three weeks later. We are going to spin that old corporate dispute into a pattern of long-term kleptomania and financial instability.”
Andrew’s eyes lit up with sudden, malicious hope. “You can prove she stole money eight years ago?”
“We don't need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” Thorne sneered. “We just need to introduce enough doubt during the custody hearing to trigger a court-ordered psychological evaluation and a temporary freeze on her sole custody request. If we force her into a long, drawn-out legal fight, her old man will run out of money paying Vance’s fees. Eventually, she will bleed out financially and settle on our terms.”
Andrew laughed—a desperate, manic sound. “Yes! That’s it! She thinks she’s so smart because her father is a small-town property lawyer. She has no idea how dirty real court battles get.”
“There’s one more thing,” Thorne added, leaning forward. “I set up a meeting with the family court mediator for this Friday. We are going to request an emergency unsupervised visitation order for Lily. If we get the child for forty-eight hours, we can claim Hannah is alienating the child from you.”
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“I’ll get my daughter back,” Andrew grinned, his confidence returning like a toxic tide. “And once I have Lily, Hannah will crawl back on her knees to sign whatever paper I put in front of her.”
Little did Andrew know, every word of his aggressive strategy was being anticipated by a man who had spent forty years predicting the desperation of failing men.
