Page 58 of The Silent Hour

Cortez looked between them, and Eric opened the meeting. "Why isn't your current counsel sitting here?"

"They became unsuitable."

"Unsuitable how?" Eric pressed.

Cortez leaned back and spread his legs. "They stopped understanding what was required to be useful."

I spoke before he could bury the answer beneath another layer of bullshit. "Did you fire them? Or did something happen to them?"

He laughed as if I had made a joke. "You're very direct. I like it.”

Katerina folded her hands. "If previous counsel withdrew because of ethical conflicts, threats, interference, or anything else that could affect our representation, we need to know before we consider stepping into their place."

Cortez's attention slid toward Kat. "I like her too."

Katerina's expression didn't move. "I'm flattered."

"If we take this case, you work with us on our terms. We don't get ambushed. We don't get half-truths. You don't decide which facts your attorneys deserve to know."

Cortez's eyes settled on mine. "And if I agree?"

"Then I review everything."

"Everything?"

"Discovery. Transcripts. Prior motions. Financial records. Informant material. Communications with previous counsel that you're legally permitted to disclose. All of it."

"And then?" he pressed.

"Then I decide whether I want your case."

That finally erased his smile, and for the next twenty minutes, we went through the indictment without any of his humor only he found entertaining. The meeting became a slow, methodical excavation. We went through the charges one at a time. Racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy to distribute.

I requested discovery logs, asked about jurisdictional challenges, pressed on informants whose names were redacted into black bars on a page. I traced the faint outlines of financial trails that vanished into shell corporations and offshore accounts, and reviewed the prior counsel’s strategy, which read like a surrender document.

Cortez answered every question with the polished evasion of a man who’d spent a lifetime talking without saying anything. He’d offer a fragment, then pull back, a glimpse of something real before sliding the curtain shut again. I’d dealt with men like him before. They treated information like currency, hoarding it even from those hired to save them.

By the time I closed my leather-bound notebook, my knuckles were white where I’d been gripping my pen. Two realizations had crystallized in the sterile air between us. First, Dominic Cortez hadn’t come to me as his first choice. He’d come because whatever had happened with his last team had left him backed into a corner, desperate enough to reach for a name like mine.

Second, the money, the astronomical retainer he’d waved around like confetti—wasn’t the point. If the Marcelli Group took this on, the only calculation that mattered was risk.

Cortez leaned back in his bolted-down chair, the metal groaning softly under his weight. “So?”

I kept my voice level. “So what?”

“Do I get the best?”

I laid my pen deliberately across the closed notebook. “You get a review.”

His brow furrowed, the charm thinning at the edges. “I’m not here for a review, Ethan. I want your signature on my file.”

“You’ll have an answer once we’ve examined everything.”

“Men usually line up to sit where you’re sitting,” he countered, the arrogant fuck.

I stood, not bothering to respond to that. “You’ll hear from us when we’ve reviewed everything. If there’s a defense we believe we can execute, we’ll discuss representation. If there isn’t, we’ll tell you that too.”

Cortez studied me for a long moment, then let out a low laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “Smart man.”