Chapter 8 - The Thirty-Eight Percent
Marsh’s criminal case moved slowly.
Money cases often did.
People expected explosions from men like Cormack.
Instead there were subpoenas.
Audits.
Depositions.
Boxes of records.
Marsh hated paper when paper stopped obeying him.
His attorneys attacked Sloan’s credibility.
They called her ambitious.
Resentful.
A failed law student.
A secretary who had become emotionally involved with a competing investor.
Sloan read every filing.
Then went to class.
Evidence.
Civil procedure.
Administrative law.
At night she studied at Cormack’s dining table because his apartment had better light.
He learned not to speak when she highlighted.
She learned he could cook exactly two things.
Eggs.
Steak.
Nothing else.
Toby visited on weekends and destroyed the illusion that Cormack’s home was intimidating.
He left socks on the sofa.
Changed the television channel without asking.
Called Fitz “Mr. Suspicious.”
Fitz pretended to hate it.
Everyone knew he didn’t.
One Sunday, Toby asked the question adults avoided.
“Are you mafia?”
Sloan choked on tea.
Cormack looked at him.
“I have done business I am not proud of.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Toby.”
“What? People at school know his name.”
Cormack did not become defensive.
“Some people would use that word.”
Toby nodded.
“Do you?”
Cormack thought.
“I used to think the word meant power.”
“And now?”
Cormack looked at Sloan.
“Now I think power is only useful if people can say no to you.”
Toby considered.
“That sounds like something Sloan said.”
“It probably is.”
Sloan smiled.
Riverline broke ground in May.
Four hundred jobs became real.
Then five hundred.
Union apprenticeships expanded.
A public transit connector was added after community pressure.
Cormack complained about the budget.
Approved it anyway.
The thirty-eight percent once controlled by Marsh was divided among five replacement sources.
No one person could hold the project hostage again.
At the groundbreaking, Lena Torres handed Cormack a shovel.
He looked at it.
“What?”
“You break ground.”
“I own suits.”
“Today you own dirt.”
Sloan laughed from the front row.
Cormack heard.
He dug.
The photograph ran in the paper under a headline about Riverline’s new governance structure.
Not his favorite picture.
Sloan framed it.
Marsh’s trial began in June.
The prosecution called Dr. Porter.
Then Daniel accountants.
Then Royce Nadau.
Royce had accepted a cooperation agreement after investigators found he had transported Sloan across state lines.
He testified that Marsh planned to keep Sloan in New Buffalo until the documents were complete.
He also testified that Preston told Marsh Sloan would comply because Toby “was all she had.”
Sloan sat in the courtroom.
Cormack beside her.
His hand rested on the bench between them.
Palm up.
Not touching.
Available.
She placed her hand in his.
When Sloan took the stand, Marsh looked older.
Still polished.
Still composed.
But smaller somehow.
The prosecutor showed the coaster.
Help. Table 12.
Then the notary journal.
Page 117.
Entry 604.
Names.
Times.
Refusals.
Details Marsh had dismissed as secretarial habit.
The prosecutor asked why Sloan recorded the license plate.
“Because I thought I might need someone to know where I had been.”
“Did you expect anyone to find the journal?”
“I hoped.”
“Who?”
Sloan looked toward Cormack.
Then away.
“Anyone willing to read it.”
The defense attorney rose.
He attacked.
Why attend the dinner if she felt pressured?
Why enter the car?
Why not call 911?
Why not scream?
Why accept Toby’s changed medical priority?
Sloan answered each question.
Then he asked, “Isn’t it true that your relationship with Mr. Vale has financially benefited you?”
“No.”
“He provided housing.”
“No. I paid rent.”
“Security.”
“Temporarily, at my request and under terms I approved.”
“Legal referrals.”
“He gave me names. I hired my own attorney.”
“Employment?”
“I declined his first offer.”
Cormack almost smiled.
The attorney noticed.
“And law school?”
“I pay tuition with my settlement and loans.”
“So Mr. Vale has given you nothing?”
Sloan looked at Cormack.
There was a long pause.
“He believed me before he knew whether it would cost him $400 million.”
The courtroom went quiet.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It’s the answer.”
The judge instructed Sloan to respond directly.
She did.
“No financial support.”
The defense moved on.
Marsh was convicted after nine days of deliberations.
Fraud.
Coercion.
Witness intimidation.
Conspiracy.
Several charity-related offenses.
Not every count.
Enough.
Preston pleaded guilty before his own trial.
He received a lesser sentence for cooperation.
Halloway and Straoud dissolved.
Hannah, the replacement secretary, sent Sloan an email.
I quit. I’m applying to paralegal school. Thank you for telling me to read everything.
Sloan printed it.
Kept it.
The night of the verdict, Cormack took her to dinner.
Not the restaurant from Table 12.
Somewhere small.
Italian.
No private room.
No guards inside.
Sloan looked at the menu.
“You’re quiet.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
Cormack reached into his coat.
Sloan narrowed her eyes.
“If that is jewelry, put it back.”
He stopped.
“It is not jewelry.”
“Good.”
He placed the original coaster on the table.
Preserved now inside a clear evidence sleeve.
Sloan stared.
“I thought the court had it.”
“Released today.”
She touched the plastic.
The ink remained blurred.
Help. Table 12.
Cormack said, “I wanted you to have it.”
Sloan shook her head.
“No.”
His expression changed.
“You keep it.”
“Why?”
“Because you answered it.”
Cormack looked at her for a long moment.
Then carefully returned the coaster to his coat.
No argument.
No false modesty.
He accepted the meaning.
Sloan smiled.
“Now you can give me the jewelry.”
He stared.
She laughed.
“I’m kidding.”
Cormack did not.
“Good.”
That should have warned her.
It did not.
After the verdict, Sloan expected relief to feel dramatic.
It did not.
She woke the next morning and still needed groceries.
Toby still forgot to replace the milk.
Law school still expected eighty pages of reading by Monday.
Cormack still sent texts containing entire paragraphs with no punctuation because he considered punctuation optional outside contracts.
Normal life returned without ceremony.
Sloan was grateful.
At the end of that week, she visited Mercy Northside alone.
She stood outside the pediatric wing where Toby had spent so many nights.
A new plaque had been mounted near the elevators.
PEDIATRIC CARE DECISIONS ARE CLINICAL DECISIONS.
NO DONOR OR TRUSTEE MAY ALTER PATIENT PRIORITY.
Sloan read it twice.
Dr. Nayar approached.
“You did that.”
Sloan shook her head.
“A lot of people did.”
“You started the question.”
“That’s different.”
“It often is.”
They stood together.
Parents moved through the hallway carrying coffee, blankets, phone chargers, and the stunned expressions of people learning how quickly a normal week could become a medical one.
Sloan remembered being twenty-one.
Two dead parents.
A younger brother.
Law school withdrawal forms.
She had thought leaving school meant she had failed the life she planned.
Now she understood that survival had not been a detour from her life.
It had been part of it.
Dr. Nayar said, “Toby tells me you’re back in school.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of law?”
Sloan looked at the plaque.
“I’m starting to have ideas.”
That evening she told Cormack she wanted to build a practice around coercion hidden inside employment, finance, and institutional power.
He listened.
Then said, “That sounds expensive.”
She laughed.
May you like
“Good thing lawyers charge by the hour.”
For once, Cormack had no objection.
