Chapter 6
The anonymous bar complaint arrived the following Monday.
Cassian’s professional responsibility counsel called him at six thirty in the morning.
“Don’t panic.”
Cassian looked at the clock.
“You called me before sunrise.”
“Fair.”
The complaint accused Cassian of knowingly concealing a biological child.
Using firm resources to fund private support.
Falsifying case-development expenses.
Misusing confidential client accounts.
And threatening individuals who might expose the arrangement.
Cassian sat up.
“Threatening whom?”
“The complaint doesn’t identify them publicly.”
“Evidence?”
“Attached.”
He received the secure file.
First attachment:
The forged letter to Lena bearing Cassian’s signature.
Second:
Thirteen years of support records.
Third:
Vale & Vale reimbursement entries.
Fourth:
A declaration stating that Cassian had instructed intermediaries to ensure Lena and Jace remained silent.
The declaration was unsigned in the copy provided to him.
Cassian called Rebecca.
Then his firm’s ethics partner, Amelia Grant.
By nine, they were in a conference room.
Amelia looked furious.
Not at Cassian.
At the documents.
“If regulators believe you knowingly used client-related expense accounts to hide family support, this gets ugly fast.”
Cassian nodded.
“Were client funds actually used?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The reimbursement labels referenced several old major cases.
One belonged to a corporate executive whose legal-defense escrow had carried millions in retainers.
Another belonged to a racketeering defendant whose trust-account reconciliation had already been questioned years earlier.
Cassian looked at the entries.
“My father handled those accounts.”
“Yes.”
“Did I?”
“You signed annual firm certifications as partner.”
Cassian’s expression hardened.
“Which means?”
“It means if the books were false and you should have caught it, there may be professional consequences even if you didn’t create the scheme.”
Cassian accepted that.
Then Rebecca asked the important question.
“When was the complaint drafted?”
Metadata from one attachment indicated the packet had been assembled at least three weeks before the locker incident.
Before Cassian publicly acknowledged Jace.
Before the new DNA test.
Before the school confrontation.
The complaint was already waiting.
Rebecca leaned back.
“Jace told you, ‘Touch me and everything burns.’”
Cassian looked at her.
“Yes.”
“What burns if you touch him?”
“Bar license.”
“Reputation.”
“Custody concerns.”
“Criminal exposure if he’s injured.”
Cassian understood.
If he had struck Jace in a school hallway—
a thirteen-year-old biological son he had supposedly abandoned—
the story would have been devastating.
Not because one act automatically proved thirteen years of wrongdoing.
Because it would make the old allegations emotionally believable.
Rebecca looked at him.
“Someone wanted a present-day image that matched the past they were building.”
Cassian thought of Arthur.
Then forced himself to stop.
Suspicion was not proof.
Amelia pointed toward the complaint.
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
“The complaint uses a phrase from internal Vale governance documents.”
Cassian looked up.
Pattern of compromised professional judgment.
Cassian had used those exact words six months earlier when proposing a restructuring of Vale & Vale.
His plan would move trust accounting, client-fund reconciliation, and partner compensation out of family control and into an outside compliance office.
Arthur had called it an insult.
Cassian had scheduled the final partner vote for six weeks from now.
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If Cassian were temporarily suspended from management during a disciplinary investigation, the reform could stall.
The timing stopped looking accidental.
