Chapter 6 - The Storm Building In Midtown
By 8:00 AM the following morning, the sun was trying to break through the thick grey clouds hovering over the Manhattan skyline.
Inside the glass-walled corner office of Vance Enterprises on Fifth Avenue, Harrison Vance was pacing back and forth across his Persian rug.
His dark suit was fresh, but his eyes were bloodshot from a lack of sleep and endless frustration.
Sitting across from him was his chief legal officer, Arthur Stern, a sharp, sixty-year-old attorney holding a manila folder.
"Harrison, you need to calm down," Arthur advised, setting his coffee cup on the glass desk.
"You can't sue a twenty-five-year-old waitress for speaking sign language to your son in a public restaurant."
"She humiliated me in front of the board of trustees, Arthur!" Harrison roared, slamming his fist onto the mahogany desk.
"She interfered with my parental authority! And now Leo is staying at Eleanor's penthouse in Brooklyn and refusing to answer my texts!"
Arthur leaned back in his leather executive chair, looking at his client with a mix of exhaustion and legal realism.
"Leo is sixteen years old, Harrison," Arthur noted dryly. "If you push this into a custody battle, Eleanor will bring that girl to testify."
"Do you really want a Manhattan family court judge watching video footage of you mocking your deaf son at a country club?"
Harrison froze in his tracks, his breath catching in his throat as the legal nightmare of the situation began to settle in.
"There is no video footage," Harrison whispered, though a seed of doubt immediately took root in his mind.
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Arthur opened the manila folder, sliding a printed news article across the desk.
"The story hit the New York Post online edition an hour ago, Harrison," Arthur said grimly.
