Chapter 11: The Subpoena
December arrived with a biting frost that turned the city’s puddles into sheets of fragile glass and forced pedestrians to bury their faces in woolen scarves. Inside the third-floor apartment, the radiator hissed a steady, comforting rhythm as Amy reviewed her lesson plans for the upcoming spring semester. Her recertification exams were scheduled for early January, and she had spent the last three weeks studying late into the night after Leo finally fell asleep.
The sharp ring of the apartment buzzer broke the quiet hum of the afternoon. Connor, who was working remotely from the small dining table on a risk-assessment report for his new firm, looked up sharply. He stood and walked to the intercom near the door, pressing the talk button.
“Delivery,” a neutral voice crackled through the speaker. “Legal service for Connor Vance.”
Connor’s expression darkened. He buzzed the courier up, opening their apartment door a few inches before the man even reached the third-floor landing. A young man in a heavy winter coat stepped out of the stairwell, holding a manila folder filled with stiff legal paper.
“Connor Vance?” the courier asked, holding out a clipboard.
“I am,” Connor said, signing his name with a swift, practiced stroke of his pen.
The courier handed over the manila folder and turned without another word, his footsteps echoing down the concrete stairs. Connor closed the apartment door, locking both deadbolts before walking back to the living room and sitting down at the table. He opened the folder, his eyes scanning the formal legal typography with practiced speed.
Amy looked up from her textbooks, her heart doing a nervous flutter against her ribs. “What is it? Is it your mother?”
“It’s a petition for grandparent visitation,” Connor said, his voice dangerously low as he read through the itemized demands drafted by Helen’s high-priced legal team. “She’s claiming that our decision to cut off contact is causing irreparable emotional harm to her as a primary familial figure, and she’s petitioning the court for court-mandated weekend visitations at the estate.”
Amy stood up so fast her chair scraped loudly against the hardwood floor. “Visitation? After everything she did? After she treated our home like a prison camp and tried to have us investigated for neglect?”
“She’s trying to claw her way back in through the legal system because she realized intimidation and financial threats don't work anymore,” Connor said, standing up and pulling Amy into his arms. He felt her trembling against him, not with the helpless fear of the past, but with the righteous anger of a mother protecting her child. “She wants to prove she still has control. But Marcus anticipated this exact move. He told me the second we left the estate that she would try the family court route.”
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“What do we do?” Amy asked, looking up into his eyes with fierce determination.
“We fight her,” Connor said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. “We take every single log, every recorded threat, and every compliance schedule she forced on you, and we hand it to the judge. We show the court that her home isn't a safe environment for a child, and that her petition is nothing more than an extension of her psychological abuse. We finish this once and for all.”
