Ava reached for the folder with hands she couldn’t keep from shaking.
The top page showed an acquisition order filed Monday morning, the day after the retreat ended. While she’d been filling out HR paperwork and navigating office gossip, Lilith had been filing documents to destroy her parents’ lives.
But the documents beneath stopped her cold.
Supplier agreements she’d never seen. Catering contracts with penalty clauses buried in the fine print. Insurance addendums that tied the restaurant’s coverage to impossible conditions. Each one bore her parents’ signatures, her mother’s careful script, her father’s bold strokes, but the paper stock was too crisp, too white. The formatting didn’t match the older documents. Fresh ink on fresh pages, backdated to look legitimate.
New traps built on fifteen-year-old foundations.
“These dates…” Ava began, forcing her voice steady. “These aren’t the original contracts.”
“Oh no, those are buried much deeper.” Lilith’s smile turned predatory. “Your parents have been signing documents with Peterson Holdings’ subsidiaries for a very long time. They didn’t realize what they were signing, of course. Immigrants trusting the nice lady in the red dress who spoke such good Mandarin, who understood their struggles, who just wanted to help them succeed.” She tilted her head, birdlike and cruel. “Language barriers can be so tricky, can’t they?”
Her phone buzzed. The screen lit up with a photo of her parents at last year’s Lunar New Year dinner: her mother beaming, her father’s arm around her shoulders.
Mom calling.
“Go ahead,” Lilith purred, gesturing magnanimously. “Answer it.”
Ava’s hand trembled as she accepted the call. “Mom?”
“Bao Bei!” Her mother’s voice was high with panic, the English crumbling into Mandarin and back. “We just got a letter, a very official letter, from lawyers I never heard of. Something about the restaurant, about foreclosure? Your father is trying to read it but the English is so complicated, so many legal words. They say we owe money, so much money, but we’ve been paying everything on time. It doesn’t make sense. The number is impossible. Bao Bei, what is happening?”
The terror in her mother’s voice, the confusion, the helplessness, hit Ava like vertigo, the floor tilting beneath her.
“Mom, listen to me.” She kept her voice steady through sheer force of will, even as Lilith watched with satisfied eyes. “Don’t sign anything else. Nothing. No matter what they send, no matter who calls. Don’t agree to anything.”
“But they say if we don’t respond by…”
“I know what they say. I’m looking at the same documents right now.” Ava met Lilith’s eyes across the desk, saw the demon’s smile widen. “Mom, please. Trust me. I’m handling it. I’ll fix this.”
“But the restaurant… your father’s heart, this will…”
“I’ll fix it. I promise. Just don’t sign anything. I love you.”
She ended the call before her voice could break.
Lilith watched with the patient satisfaction of a spider watching a fly test the web.
“Fifteen days,” she said, examining her manicured nails with theatrical disinterest. “That’s what they have to respond to thenotice of default. After that, the foreclosure proceedings begin. The restaurant, the building, the equipment, and…” She paused, savoring the moment. “Well, let’s just say the collateral extends beyond real property. Those newer contracts have some very interesting clauses about debt collection.”
Soul-debt clauses. Ava had seen them in the documents: ancient demonic language buried in the fine print.
“This won’t work,” she said, her voice hollow.
“Won’t it? I’m not violating any laws, Ava. Peterson Holdings has every right to collect on valid debts. And you, as an employee of this firm, have an obligation to represent our client’s interests. After all, Peterson Holdings has been a client of Grimm, Malphas & Associates for quite some time.”
The trap snapped into focus with crystalline clarity.
If Ava refused the case, she’d be in violation of her contract: grounds for termination, for sanctions, for her own soul-debt to the firm. If she took it but didn’t zealously represent Peterson Holdings, same outcome. And if she did represent them properly…
She’d be the one destroying her own parents.
“You’ve been planning this since I was twelve years old,” Ava said.
“Longer, actually.” Lilith rose from her desk, moving to the impossible windows. “Do you want to know the real irony? Victor and I could have been magnificent together. Two of the oldest, most powerful demons forged in Hell’s crucible. We could have reshaped the abyss. Demanded respect from the Dukes.”
“But he didn’t want you.”
