After Kindly Donating Ten Thousand, Sick Coworker Complained, I Jailed Her

The company set up an anonymous fundraiser for Alison Lambert, a seriously ill coworker, and I casually transferred ten thousand.

Then I clocked out, and Alison's family of three had my car boxed in down in the underground parking garage.

Her face was flushed and healthy, not a trace of sickness on her, and yet she thrust a slip of paper at me.

"Cordelia Fox, the back end shows you're the one who donated ten thousand, so clearly you've got money."

"I'm still twenty thousand short for my treatment. You make up the difference."

I laughed out of sheer disbelief.

"I donated anonymously out of goodwill. What gives you the right to demand another twenty thousand from me?"

Alison's mother-in-law rolled her eyes, then flopped down against the front of my car and started wailing and thrashing.

"There's no justice in this world! Rich enough for a fancy car, but she'll let a person die!"

"If you don't hand over twenty thousand today, these old bones of mine will die right here in front of your car!"

Watching the two of them slip so smoothly into the staged-accident routine, it hit me. They were using moral blackmail as extortion.

As the company's senior legal counsel of ten years, I was about to open my mouth and lay out some law and ethics.

Alison's husband, a huge man, saw I wasn't reaching for my wallet, and with that beefy, thuggish face he charged at me, hand already grabbing for my bag.

I stepped aside and dodged.

They probably had no idea that besides being the company's legal counsel, I was also a taekwondo black belt.

If they didn't want to listen to reason, well, I knew a thing or two about throwing hands too.

...

Bertram Chavez stood over six feet, all beefy muscle and thug's face.

Counting on his size, he swung a hand straight at my handbag.

I turned aside, my left hand shooting out to block his forearm.

Bertram froze, not expecting me to fight back.

While he was stunned, my right hand clamped his wrist, and driving from the waist I wrenched it sharply downward.

Bertram screamed, all resistance gone, his whole body dropping helplessly.

I followed through, lifting my right foot and driving my toe hard into the back of his knee.

The six-foot brute's knees slammed into the concrete, the pain bringing out a cold sweat.

I looked down at him, my grip not loosening an inch. If anything, I bore down harder.

"Robbery? Or snatching?"

"The cameras down here have full three-sixty coverage, no blind spots."

Bertram was shaking all over from the pain, his other hand slapping frantically at the ground, but his mouth stayed filthy.

"Let go! You're going to break it! You cheap slut, you dare hit me!"

Seeing this, Alison dropped the frail act and scrambled up off the ground.

She came at me clawing and shrieking, nails aimed straight at my face.

"Cordelia, have you lost your mind!"

"My husband spoke to you nice and civil, and you have the nerve to hit people!"

Watching Alison charge, I let out a cold laugh.

I flung Bertram off and used the momentum to swing my right leg into a side kick.

The heel of my shoe grazed the tip of Alison's nose and slammed hard into the pillar behind her.

Alison screamed in terror, her legs buckling as she dropped to the ground, then scrambled back several yards on all fours.

I fished my phone out of my bag, opened the camera, and pointed it at the couple.

"Nice and civil? He grabbed straight for my bag. You call that nice and civil?"

"Under Article 267 of the Criminal Code, snatching public or private property in a relatively large amount is punishable by up to three years in prison."

"This bag is worth three hundred thousand. Add the cash and documents inside, and it's more than enough to send him in to work a sewing machine for a few years."

The moment she heard three hundred thousand, Alison's whole face changed.

The tears came on cue, and sitting there on the ground she launched into the moral blackmail.

"Cordelia, you learn a few cheap tricks and now you're bullying people!"

"You've got a three-hundred-thousand bag, so why can't you help your big sister out?"

"We've worked together at the company for five years. You can pull ten thousand out of thin air, so twenty thousand is nothing to you."

"Just think of it as lending it to your big sister. I swear I'll pay you back, all right?"

I looked down at her.

"Lend? Pay it back with what?"

"The way you just lunged over to claw my face, a college sprinter would be ashamed. What part of that looks like terminal cancer?"

"The back-end records for anonymous donations are confidential company information. How exactly did you get hold of them?"

My three questions in a row left Alison choking on her words, and the mother-in-law sprawled on the hood immediately jumped in.

The old woman rolled around on the ground, wringing her clothes into a ruined mess as she threw her fit.

"Murder! The rich one knows martial arts, beating up honest folk!"

"Won't give money, fine, but she hits my son! Kicks my daughter-in-law!"

"My heart condition's going to give out! If you don't cough up half a million today, I'll die right under your car!"

The number had jumped from twenty thousand to five hundred thousand. I watched this cheap little performance.

"Fine."

I walked to the front of the car and rolled my wrist loose.

"Staged accident, extortion of property, sum reaching five hundred thousand."

"Under Article 274 of the Criminal Code, that's suspected extortion."

"These old bones of yours won't just die under a car. They may end up dying in prison."

The old woman cut off her crying at once.

Bertram rubbed his bruised wrist and climbed up off the ground, glanced at my leg, and didn't dare come any closer.

"Don't try to scare people with the law!"

"My wife has cancer! Terminal!"

"You've got that much money, so what's wrong with making you donate a little? It's a good deed!"

He snarled through gritted teeth.

"If you don't pay up today, believe me, I'll make sure you can't show your face in this building ever again!"

I looked at him with disgust.

"Terminal cancer, is it? Then where are the medical records? Where's the diagnosis?"

I opened my hands.

"Show them to me, and I'll transfer the money right now."

The shouting in the garage drew a crowd of coworkers heading home, and the security guards too.

The moment Alison saw the crowd swelling, she lunged at me, arms flung wide, trying to wrap them around my legs.

I didn't let her touch me. Just as she was about to grab hold, I drove my right knee up.

It caught her in the shoulder, and she let out a sharp cry.

Her body pitched backward, and she went sprawling half a meter away, flat on the ground.

Even then she kept wailing, tears and snot running down her face.

"I know you're rich. You drive a Porsche, you carry a Herms bag. Just the scraps slipping through your fingers could save my life!"

"My daughter's only three. She can't grow up without a mother!"

Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

"Isn't that the gorgeous Ms. Fox from Legal? Those moves just now were unreal."

"Poor Alison, though. Terminal illness, and this one won't even give her money, just knocks her down. Isn't that a bit much?"

"Well, she's rich. Trained in taekwondo, too. People like us can't afford to cross her."

Resentment against the rich was an easy fire to light.

Seeing the mood tip his way, Bertram found his nerve. He pulled out a sheet of paper and held it high.

"Everybody, look! This is my wife's medical report!"

"It says right here, in black and white. Terminal stomach cancer!"

"Cordelia, you're a woman yourself. How can you be this heartless?"

Emboldened by the crowd, Bertram took a step forward and shoved the paper at my face.

My left hand closed around his wrist.

He flinched back, and my right hand slid the paper away from him.

My left hand pushed him off in the same motion, and I held the report up to the camera.

"A tumor screening report from the city hospital?"

"Carcinoembryonic antigen, normal."

"Alpha-fetoprotein, normal."

I lifted my head and looked around at my coworkers.

"Everyone, if I'm not mistaken, with terminal stomach cancer, these two markers would be off the charts, several times over."

"And the only thing abnormal on this sheet is right down here. Severe fatty liver and overnutrition."

The onlookers went quiet. Alison's face froze, and she rushed forward to snatch the report back.

"You're lying! You're not even a doctor. What do you know!"

I tossed the report up into the air.

Alison threw herself after it and slammed hard onto the ground.

"I'm not a doctor, no. But I know common sense, and I know how to spot a forgery."

I looked down at Alison scrambling on the floor.

"The official seal on this report has blurred edges, and the spacing between the characters is wrong. It's obviously one of those fifty-dollar fake stamps carved at some corner print shop."

"Forging the seal of a state agency or public institution. Well, Alison, that's one more charge to add to the list."

Alison came apart completely.

His scam exposed, Bertram flew into a rage and cast around for a weapon.

He grabbed a dry-powder fire extinguisher from the corner of the garage and swung it down onto my Porsche.

The door caved into a deep dent, paint splintering, and the crowd cried out and scrambled back.

The guards waved their hands in a panic.

"Don't, don't! That car's worth a few million!"

Bertram hoisted the extinguisher again and brought it down on the hood, cursing at me between swings.

"So you know martial arts! So you like showing off! So you like quoting the law!"

"Can't beat you in a fight, but I can sure as hell wreck your car! Today I'm turning this piece of junk into scrap!"

He hammered it three times. The hood buckled badly, and cracks spiderwebbed across the windshield.

Off to the side, the old woman clapped and cheered.

"Smash it! Smash the poisonous witch dead!"

I didn't move to stop him. I just held up my phone, filming, and looked at the crumpled front end with a cold smile.

"Bertram, do you know how they assess damage on a fully insured, custom-spec Porsche Panamera?"

He stopped and glared at me.

"Based on what you just did, the door, the hood, the front windshield all need factory replacements."

"Rough estimate, repairs over four hundred thousand."

"Willful destruction of public and private property, a large sum. That starts at three to seven years in prison."