The Night before the Awards Faye Evans, an A-List actress, was mingling with producers, directors, and other actors in the VIP area of Bar Ocean, the trendy hangout of the top stars. She accepted a tall flute of champers from a waiter and sipped it while discussing potential winners at tomorrow’s awards ceremony. She was being heavily tipped for her role as a female lawyer fighting for woman’s rights. Faye was far too bus...

When Ludvik dreamt, it was often of painted angels and demons, of starry skies and lofty peaks deep in the Carpathian mountains. He saw soaring spires and battlements, Gothic towers, Baroque palaces, domed cathedrals and impossible castles such as only his imagination could build. And, always in his dreams, he was a traveler; a restless seeker after truth and beauty. But wherever he travelled in his dreams, he always seem...

I wasn’t sure how to respond after learning that our law firm was just another shell corporation of a wealthy billionaire with a questionable legal standing. Physically, Lenny didn’t seem to fit my profile of a gangster. I always pictured mob guys to be fat Italian men with balding heads that talked with a Brooklyn accent.  Lenny was none of those things. He somewhat resembled a middle-aged Paul Newman: confident, if not...

  I could hear her drying her hair when I set her drink on the nightstand. I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about how bizarre my life was. Why was I promoted? Bob had never even hinted that I was being considered for a promotion. In a matter of just a few hours, my life was flipped upside down. It was still difficult for me to accept that my once conservative wife was a real-life porn-star. At least she had called...

  It was impossible to focus at work. My thoughts continually drifted to the revelations I’d discovered about my wife. I was so preoccupied with all the events happening around me, I had little time to digest it all. I had reassured Marika I loved her and that finding out she was a porn actress didn’t change but we both knew that wasn’t completely true. There was no possible way I could view her in the same light ever aga...

I waited outside of the examining room while Marika was checked and samples were taken. After a few minutes, I was approached by an older police officer in plain clothes.                                                                                                                                 “Are you Mr. Robert Thomas?” he asked. “Yes.” “I’m detective Folly and I have a few questions to ask concerning Mrs. Thomas. C...

  Marika, true to her word, emailed me a list of twelve family counselors that she used in her law practice and asked me to pick one. Being a pragmatist, I gave the list of names to one of my junior research associates. I asked if he could work on it off the clock as a favor. He agreed, and within a day he had a file on each therapist. My main concern was their rate of reconciliation, but that wasn’t possible because thos...

I had just finished a case I had been working on for several months, and against all odds I won. McPherson v. the state of California was a high-profile first-degree murder trial where I was lead council for the first time. It was one of those newsworthy cases that was tried in the press, making it almost impossible not to have a tainted jury. Even my firm considered I had little to no chance of winning, which is probably...