Ten-Dollar Grim Reaper

1 I am the only lawyer in New York with a flawless winning streak. Online, they call me the Ten-Dollar Grim Reaper. The rules are simple. My radio hotline opens for exactly five minutes every night. If you get through, no matter how rich or untouchable your opponent is, you pay me ten bucks, and I guarantee a victory. For the past three years, domestic abusers, deadbeat billionaires, and corporate tyrants have been stripped down to their last penny by my hands. Tonight, at two in the morning, the lines opened. Over a hundred thousand callers jammed the switchboard instantly. But the very first voice that came through the static was one I would never forget even if I were dead. “Mom… I finally scraped together ten dollars.” “My boss didn’t just steal six months of my wages… he had his goons shatter my legs. They took every last cent I had.” “Will you… will you please help me?” The live chat on the station’s broadcast instantly caught fire. [Holy shit! Did I hear that right? That’s Evelyn’s actual daughter?!] [My god, what kind of monster is that boss? Crippling a girl and robbing her? My heart is breaking!] [Is this even a question? Evelyn goes to war for absolute strangers. For her own flesh and blood, she’s going to make that bastard rot in a cell forever!] I sat in the dimly lit studio, silently listening to my daughter’s ragged sobs echoing through my headset. I reached out and cut the line. “I won’t help you.” … The chat exploded into absolute chaos. [What the hell?! She just hung up! That’s her own kid! How cold-blooded can you be?] [Is this a scripted PR stunt? Are they just farming views?] Ignoring the wall of insults scrolling across my screen, I tapped the edge of my microphone. “Producer. Next caller.” Three seconds later, the line clicked. “Ms. Evelyn…” a timid, trembling girl’s voice whispered. “I took a summer job, and the sketchy temp agency confiscated my ID.” The girl was crying so hard she could barely breathe. “I worked overtime for a whole month straight, and they only paid me eight hundred bucks…” “They threatened me. They said going to the cops is useless because they have people on the inside…” “I’ll take the case.” My voice was crisp, slicing through the heavy studio air. “Have your ten dollars ready. Be at my firm at eight tomorrow morning to sign the retainer.” “Thank you! Oh my god, thank you so much!” The girl sobbed gratefully before the line disconnected. The viewers completely lost their minds. [You’ll take a stranger’s case over your own kid who just got her legs broken?!] [Did she press the wrong button? What kind of sick joke is this?] I didn’t even blink. “Producer. Next.” The third caller was a middle-aged woman, her words rushing out in a breathless panic, dripping with pure hatred. “Evelyn! A bunch of rich trust-fund brats have been tormenting my daughter at school! They filmed her and threatened to ruin her life if she snitched!” The woman’s voice cracked. “The school won’t do a damn thing. The cops claim there’s not enough proof. The main bully’s family is pure old money, and they swore they’d run us out of New York!” “Who is the family?” I asked softly. “The Vanguard Syndicate! The youngest son!” Vanguard. The most notorious corporate mafia in the city, deeply tied to the criminal underworld. “I’ll take it.” I didn’t hesitate for a split second. “Bring your daughter to my office tomorrow morning.” “For ten dollars, I will personally ensure the golden boy of Vanguard spends the best years of his life making license plates.” “Bless you, Evelyn! I’d get on my knees and kiss the ground you walk on!” The woman’s hysterical weeping faded as the call ended. By the time I finished logging the two cases, the chat wasn’t just angry anymore. It was a vicious crusade of moral outrage. [Are you even human? You play the savior for the rest of the world, but leave your own kid to die?] [Is your whole ‘defender of the weak’ persona just a massive scam? Are you even her real mother?!] [Someone call 911! Send the cops to rescue that poor girl!] Right at that second, another call forced its way through the jammed switchboard. “Mom…” My daughter’s voice drifted out, so weak it was barely a whisper. “They’re coming back. This was my only chance. If they catch me on this phone, they’re going to kill me…” “Please, Mom. Save me…” Every single syllable was a rusted blade twisting deep into my chest. The volume of messages crashing the server was so intense the system started to lag. [Evelyn, say something! Are you seriously going to let your daughter die?!] [Cold-blooded psycho! You don’t deserve to be a mother!] I kept my jaw locked tight. I didn’t make a sound. “Evelyn!” My producer’s voice roared through my earpiece, thick with suppressed fury. “I’ve always respected you. You’ve always fought for the little guy! But what the hell is wrong with you tonight?!” His angry shouts echoed from the control room behind the glass. “That is your daughter!” “I broke the rules and overrode the system to patch her back into the main line! The least you could do is say something to her!” “Five minutes is up.” I stared at the digital timer glowing red on the wall. I pulled off my headset and tossed it onto the console. “Are you out of your damn mind?!” The producer slammed his fists against the soundproof glass, his eyes bloodshot. “That is your own flesh and blood! Are you being blackmailed? Do they have a gun to your head? Say something!” The screen was a blur of frantic text. [Why?! You help stray dogs on the street, but you toss your own kid to the wolves?] [There has to be a catch! Blink twice if you’re being held hostage!] [Just give us a reason! Give us one single reason! She came from your own womb!] I slowly lifted my head and stared dead into the studio camera. “You want to know the reason?” “You’ll all find out soon enough.” Early the next morning, my phone started buzzing violently with a summons from the NYPD. The moment I parked my car in front of the central precinct, a tsunami of reporters and cameramen swarmed me, blocking every possible exit. “Evelyn! Your daughter escaped a torture dungeon in the middle of the night and ran barefoot to the cops!” “We heard her legs were snapped in half! Why did you leave her to die on live radio?” “Is this some twisted PR stunt cooked up by the two of you?” Camera flashes blinded me. I shoved past the microphones being thrust into my face and fought my way into the main lobby. Nora was huddled on a plastic bench in the corner. Her clothes were shredded into filthy rags. Her bare feet were covered in burst blood blisters and dried mud. Thick, purple lash marks and blistered cigarette burns crisscrossed over her exposed arms and calves. The second she saw me, she lunged forward, throwing her arms around my legs in a desperate embrace. “Mom! I finally got away!” She wept with a primal, gut-wrenching agony. “The boss locked me in a basement… he whipped me with a belt, and then he had his guys stomp on my shins until the bones cracked…” “I dragged myself for six miles until I saw a cruiser. Mom, please, you have to help me!” The mechanical clicking of a hundred cameras echoed through the lobby. A female officer standing nearby wiped her reddened eyes and tried to gently support Nora’s weight. “Ma’am, your daughter’s injuries are severe. The forensic examiner already classified this as felony aggravated assault.” The cop glared at me. “When are you taking the case? We will fully cooperate with your evidence gathering.” I stared down at Nora from above. Taking a deliberate step back, I pulled my leg free from her grip. “I have no intention of taking this case.” The lobby plunged into an absolute, suffocating silence. The female officer’s eyes widened in horror. “Are you insane? She is your daughter!” “That is her own problem.” I let out a cold chuckle. “She is a legal adult. Since she filed a police report, the police will handle it.” “If that place is really the hellhole she claims it is, she can just provide the evidence and let the DA press charges.” The cop was shaking with rage. “She barely made it out of that basement alive! Look at what they did to her! Even a complete stranger would have a heart!” “How can a mother say something so incredibly vile?” “I am a lawyer.” My voice was a flat, emotionless drone. “Lawyers care about evidence. Not bloodlines.” Nora stared up at me, her eyes filled with absolute despair, shaking her head frantically. “They took my phone! I don’t have audio tapes, I don’t have video!” “But these wounds are proof! There has to be blood left at the scene!” With trembling fingers, she reached into the torn pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a crumpled, blood-stained ten-dollar bill. “Mom. This is my last ten dollars in the world.” “Please. I am begging you. Take my case…” She raised the bloody bill above her head and violently slammed her forehead against the precinct’s tile floor. Thud. A sickening, hollow sound echoed. A web of red instantly bloomed across her forehead. I stared at that bloody ten-dollar bill on the floor. I didn’t even twitch a muscle to bend down. “Not enough.” The words slipped from my lips. “Witness testimony isn’t ironclad. Without a silver bullet to kill the defense, I do not play games I am destined to lose.” I turned on my heel and walked toward the exit. The crowd went feral. “You aren’t even human!” A reporter screamed, shoving a heavy camera lens right into my cheek. “Do you even deserve to be a mother? Do you deserve to practice law?!” Someone in the mob yanked the aggressive reporter back, shouting over the noise. “Hold on! Evelyn has a spotless reputation for charity! She wouldn’t abandon her own kid without a damn good reason!” “Yeah! She helps homeless people for free! She must be under some kind of gag order!” Just then, the heavy thud of running footsteps echoed from outside the lobby. The crowd was violently shoved apart. “A damn good reason? Don’t let this snake fool you!” “She is no saint!” The voice belonged to my husband. Robert. Smack! A thick stack of printed papers was viciously slapped right across my face. “Look at this! All of you, look at it!” Robert pointed wildly at the papers fluttering to the floor, the veins in his neck bulging. “These are the wire transfers for her offshore accounts!” “At midnight yesterday, three million dollars was suddenly deposited into her name!” The journalists swarmed like sharks smelling blood, diving for the scattered papers. The cameras zoomed in tight on the highlighted transaction. “The sender…” A reporter gasped out loud. “Vanguard Corporation?!” A collective intake of breath sucked the oxygen out of the room. Vanguard Corporation. The exact company owned by the monster who broke my daughter’s legs. Robert glared at me with pure venom. “You didn’t reject her because of a lack of evidence!” “You’re just a greedy, soulless parasite!” “For three million bucks, you sold your own kid’s life to the slaughterhouse!” The few people in the crowd who had just been defending me instantly went dead silent. Hundreds of eyes, sharp with disgust and pure hatred, pinned me to the spot. Nora slumped onto the cold tiles, staring at me with hollow, vacant eyes. “Mom…” Her voice was broken, shaking uncontrollably. “Is it true?” “You have a plan, right? Tell me you have a plan.” “That three million… it’s a private settlement they offered me, right?” “You just took the money to string them along so I can pay for my leg surgery… right?!” I looked down to meet her gaze. “You are mistaken.” My tone was absolute ice. “There is no secret plan. There is no settlement.” “That three million is not your medical fund. It is my retainer fee.” The precinct lobby felt like a graveyard. Nora froze, completely paralyzed. I stepped right past her, facing the flashing cameras with a perfectly blank expression. “I have officially accepted Vanguard Corporation as my client.” “As their lead defense counsel, I will be filing a countersuit against you for malicious defamation and character assassination, seeking ten million dollars in damages.” “The law is blind. I will not bend the rules just because you happened to be born from me.” “Evelyn! Are you even a person anymore?!” Robert lunged forward, grabbing the collar of my blazer, his fist raised high in the air. “I want a divorce!” “I refuse to be married to a cold-blooded snake, and my daughter doesn’t need a mother who worships money over her own flesh!” The livestream chats on the reporters’ phones were moving at lightspeed. [I am sick to my stomach. She took dirty money to sue her own crippled kid!] [Last night she acted all mysterious saying we’d find out the reason. The reason was a massive payday!] The female officer wrapped her arms around the hyperventilating Nora, screaming at the crowd. “Somebody help her! You reporters, put out a call on your networks! Are there any lawyers out there willing to take this girl’s case?!” A few legal correspondents in the crowd awkwardly glanced at each other, immediately lowering their heads. Who would dare? Every attorney in New York knew that Evelyn had a hundred percent win rate. Going to war against me was a guaranteed career suicide. Nobody was going to throw away their future for a broken girl they didn’t even know. Nora buried her face in Robert’s chest, the shock morphing into a hollow, inescapable despair. Just as the entire room accepted that Nora had already lost… Bang! The heavy glass doors of the precinct were kicked wide open. “I’ll take the damn case!” A young man in a flawlessly tailored suit strode into the lobby. Arthur. The only dark horse in the New York legal scene who came close to matching my win rate. Everyone called him my natural successor. Five years ago, he was a broke law student backed into a corner. Loan sharks had driven his parents to suicide. The mob was hunting him down, snapping three of his ribs in an alleyway. He begged every law firm in the city, but they were too terrified of the mob to help him. At two in the morning, he called my radio hotline with nothing but ten dollars to his name. I took the job. I dragged him out from under the mob’s butcher knife and sent every single one of those thugs to a maximum-security prison. Ever since that day, he treated me like a god. He spent his entire career trying to walk in my footsteps. “You’ve changed, Evelyn.” Arthur stared me down. “You bowed down to corporate money. You left your own daughter in the dirt. You don’t deserve to wear the title of an attorney.” “Starting today, I am taking full control of Nora’s case.” “And I am going to destroy you in that courtroom myself!” The lobby erupted into deafening cheers and applause. I looked at the righteous fury burning in Arthur’s eyes and let out a faint smirk. “Are you sure about that?” My voice dripped with arrogant pity. “Going against me is a death sentence for your career.” “I’ll bet my entire life on this if it means ripping that mask off your face!” Arthur ground his teeth. “Why are you doing this? Just for three million bucks?” I smoothed out my collar where Robert had crumpled it and walked out the door. “You want to know the reason?” I dropped the words over my shoulder. “You’ll all find out soon enough.” Half a month later. New York Federal Courthouse. Trial day. Arthur stood at the plaintiff’s desk, radiating aggressive energy. “Your Honor, I present the forensic medical evaluation for my client, Nora!” He slammed a thick file onto the oak table. “Severe blunt force trauma to multiple soft tissue areas. Comminuted fracture of the tibia. Classified as felony-level grievous bodily harm!” “This is the architectural blueprint of Vanguard’s basement showing deliberate camera blind spots, paired with the DNA analysis of the blood found at the scene!” Stack after stack of files rained down on the desk. “The evidence is absolute!” Arthur pointed a lethal finger at the defense table. “Vanguard CEO Richard Croft and his son, Tristan Croft, are guilty of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated assault!” The gallery buzzed with aggressive whispers. The trial was being broadcast live, and the chat was a warzone. [Arthur is a beast! This evidence chain is bulletproof. Let’s see the wicked witch spin her way out of this!] [The hundred percent win rate dies today! A mother selling out her kid for dirty money is about to be humiliated on national television!] At the defense table, Richard and Tristan were sweating bullets. Tristan frantically wiped his forehead, his hands visibly shaking. Richard leaned into my space, lowering his voice into a venomous hiss. “Are you actually capable of doing your job, Evelyn?” “I paid you three million for a guaranteed win, and this kid just shoved hard evidence down our throats! Are you just gonna sit there?!” I picked up my steel thermos, took a slow sip of hot water, and completely ignored him. Arthur’s gaze cut through the courtroom to pierce right through me. “Evelyn! Faced with irrefutable proof, are you still going to protect these animals?!” “You’d sell your own daughter’s blood for a paycheck!” He slammed his fist against the wood. “Is this your so-called flawless streak? You are a disgrace to the bar!” The tension in the courtroom was a stretched wire about to snap. Every single person was watching me, practically salivating for the moment the legend finally fell from grace. The judge banged his gavel. “Does the defense have evidence to rebut the plaintiff’s claims?” I set my thermos down and slowly got to my feet. I picked up a remarkably thin manila envelope and handed it to the bailiff. “I do.” Arthur scoffed out loud. “The wounds on her body are real. The blood at the scene is real.” “What are you going to do, Evelyn? Magically invent evidence out of thin air?” The bailiff passed the envelope to the clerk. I tapped my knuckles on the table. “I suggest everyone take a look at the screens first.” The courtroom fell into an eerie hush. Every pair of eyes locked onto the giant monitors mounted on the walls. The feed clicked on. When they saw the evidence displayed on the screen, everyone was absolutely dumbfounded.

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