Standing in the threshold was a silhouette of blinding, clinical white. Catherine Bennett didn’t walk into the room; she occupied it. She was a pillar of silver and ivory, her posture so precisely vertical it made the rest of the room look tilted. Behind her, three associates moved in a silent, V-shaped formation, their leather briefcases held like shields.
She paused, a calculated beat of theater, and removed her dark sunglasses. Her eyes were a glacial, terrifying blue—the color of deep water beneath a frozen lake. She scanned the room with the bored authority of a general surveying a minor skirmish she was about to end.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound of her heels on the linoleum was the only thing audible. It was a metronome of impending doom. As she passed the back rows, I saw Garrison Ford’s hand tremble. His expensive fountain pen slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the table and rolling toward the edge like a fleeing animal.
“No,” Garrison whispered. The “Butcher of Broadway” sounded like he’d suddenly forgotten how to swallow. “That’s not… she doesn’t do New York Family Court. She doesn’t do anything under ten figures.”
Catherine reached the defense table. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t look at the judge. She turned her head slowly, a battleship turret locking onto a target, and fixed her gaze on Keith Simmons. She smiled, and it was the most predatory thing I had ever seen.
“Apologies for my tardiness, Your Honor,” she said. Her voice was a rich, low-timbre cello that reached every corner of the vault without effort. “I was delayed at the County Clerk’s office. It appears Mr. Simmons’ creative accounting in the Cayman Islands required several emergency injunctions to prevent the ‘accidental’ liquidation of marital assets during this morning’s proceedings.”
Keith’s face, once flushed with the heat of victory, turned the color of damp ash.
Judge Henderson leaned so far over his bench he nearly fell off. “Counselor,” he said, his voice cracking with a rare note of awe. “Please state your name for the record, though I suspect half the building already knows it.”
