Burty’s smile remained in place, but his eyes recalibrated. The shift was subtle, a man accustomed to owning rooms who had just encountered a question he could not wave away.
“Adriana, sweetheart.” The endearment was deliberate, a relic from an era when men like Burty used diminutives the way generals used rank, to remind everyone in the room of the hierarchy. Adriana let it pass. “My financial operations are complex. All large production companies are. There are subsidiary entities, distribution arms, tax-efficient structures, none of which are unusual and all of which your firm has reviewed.”
“We reviewed what you gave us to review.”
Burty’s smile thinned by a fraction, and for a moment the warm, avuncular producer was gone, replaced by a cooler, more alert version of himself.
“Everything my legal team has is everything there is.”
“Is it?”
The two words dropped into the room like stones into still water. Burty’s jaw moved, the smallest lateral shift, an unconscious tell that Adriana had learned to read in opposing counsel during her first year of trial practice. He was reassessing. That much was visible. What he was reassessing, Adriana could only guess.
“Adriana.” His tone shifted, no longer charming, not yet hostile, but carrying a new kind of gravity. The authority of a man who was used to being the most powerful person in any room and was reminding her that the dynamic had not changed. “I have been your client for nine years. In that time, I have never misrepresented my legal position to you. I’m not starting now.”
The sentence had the shape of truth and the texture of rehearsal. Adriana had cross-examined enough witnesses to know the difference, and Burty Howarth would not have survived redirect.
She held his gaze for three seconds longer than was comfortable. He held it back, which cost him more than he probably realized. His right hand moved to the arm of his chair and his fingers pressed into the leather with enough force to whiten his knuckles.
Then Adriana stood. Andrew rose beside her with the fluid coordination of someone who had been waiting for exactly this signal.
“We’ll be in touch,” Adriana said.
Burty walked them to the elevator with the gracious ease of a host seeing off dinner guests. In the corridor, framed photographs of Burty with actors, directors, and politicians lined the walls, a visual autobiography curated to project legitimacy and connection. His hand rested lightly on the small of Adriana’s back as they walked, a gesture she had long ago filed undertolerate but do not encourage. She didn’t step away because doing so would register as reaction, and Adriana did not give reactions she hadn’t chosen.
“Always a pleasure, Adriana. Andrew.” Burty’s smile was back at full wattage, warm and inclusive, as though the preceding twenty minutes had been a friendly chat about golf rather than a cross-examination that had produced nothing except confirmation that her client was concealing information.
The elevator doors opened, and she and Andrew stepped inside.
The doors closed. The elevator descended. The numbers ticked down in silence.
Andrew looked at her.
She looked at him.
The exchange lasted four seconds and required no words. Neither of them was surprised. Neither of them was looking forward to what came next.
“Well,” Andrew said as the numbers counted down. “That was a masterful performance of a man with nothing to hide.”
“Andrew.”
“The part where he called yousweetheartwas my favorite. Very 1997.”
The elevator reached the lobby. They walked across the polished marble floor and through the glass doors into the Brentwood afternoon, where the sun was warm and the air smelled like jasmine from the building’s landscaped entrance.
“He’s lying,” Andrew said. He said it quietly, without emphasis, the way you state a fact that has been true for long enough that the stating of it feels redundant. He slid his sunglasses on against the Brentwood glare and fell into step beside Adriana as they crossed the parking lot, the heat of the asphalt radiating through the soles of their shoes.
“Parts of it.”
“Which parts?”
The sun hit the windshield of a passing car and threw a blade of white light across Andrew’s face. He squinted and shifted his weight.
“The ones he rehearsed.” Adriana stopped beside her car, a black Mercedes sedan, maintained with the same discipline she applied to everything she owned. She pressed the key fob and the doors unlocked with a soft chirp. “The shell companies exist. That much we already knew from the tax filings. What Sienna Ramirez described was the layer beneath that, the payments to individuals, the awards manipulation, the systemic corruption. That’s what Burty says doesn’t exist.”
“And you don’t believe him.”
Adriana rested her hand on the car roof, the metal hot against her palm.