Chapter
1: The Red Ink of Justice
The
courtroom of the district court felt like a crypt: high ceilings, the smell of
old paper, and cold light pouring in through narrow windows. Attorney Daniel
Levin—whose name in legal circles was synonymous with the hardest, priciest
acquittals—adjusted his cuffs. He knew today wouldn’t be easy. Opposing him was
not merely the law, but Abraham Berg.
Judge Berg
entered as if he’d brought an Arctic cyclone with him. His robe was perfectly
pressed, and his face looked as though it had been carved from gray granite. He
didn’t spare so much as a glance for either the prosecution or the defense.
“Be
seated,” Berg said—his voice landing like a gavel blow. “On the docket: the
defense’s motion to lift the attachment on Mr. Varg’s assets.” He paused. “Mr.
Levin.” The judge’s tone held no emotion. “I have reviewed your motion to lift
the attachment on Mr. Varg’s assets. It is… curious. From the standpoint of
belles-lettres.”
A ripple of
snickers moved through the room. Daniel’s client, Mark Varg, seated in the
front row, made an irritated sound—leather creaking from the expensive
briefcase at his feet.
“Your
Honor, the defense submits that the prosecution’s arguments are based on
circumstantial—” Daniel began.
“The
defense may submit whatever it pleases,” Berg cut in without looking up from
his papers. “But the defense appears to have forgotten that we are in a court
of law, not at a public-speaking seminar. Your motion is denied. In its current
form, it does not withstand scrutiny.” He flicked his gaze toward the clerk.
“Clerk, return the documents to counsel.” Then, almost lazily: “And, Mr. Levin…
next time, try to at least meet the standards of a third-year law student.”
Daniel took
the folder. His face remained an impassive mask, but his fingers felt the
warmth of fresh ink. He opened the document.
The entire
text of his calibrated, gleaming filing had been mercilessly slashed through in
red pencil. In the margins, in tight, calligraphic handwriting, notes were
scattered like shrapnel: “Too much water. Cut the epithets—this isn’t a
literary salon.” “Pg. 14: procedural error in the warrant reference. Do you
sleep through hearings?” “Logical hole in the counterparty’s alibi argument. If
you don’t patch it by tomorrow, your client will be in a cell until the end of
the week.”
And at the
very bottom, where the attorney’s signature sat, there was an addendum: “Rewrite
by 9:00. And change your tie—the knot looks sloppy.”
From the
front row came a dry creak. Mark Varg—a man whose fortune was measured by a
number with nine zeros, and whose enemies numbered in the hundreds—leaned
forward slowly. He’d hired Levin as “the best of those meticulous Jews,” and
losing at the very first stage was not part of his plan.
Daniel
closed the folder. He could feel Varg’s heavy, appraising stare. The client’s
eyes never left the lawyer’s hands.
“What’s in
there?” Varg asked quietly when they stepped into the empty corridor. There was
no sympathy in his voice—only calculated rage. “Why did that old man make you
look like an idiot in front of the whole room?”
“Berg
doesn’t make people look like idiots, Mark. He points out what others miss,”
Daniel said, doing his best not to meet his client’s eyes. “He needs more
facts.”
Varg
stopped and blocked his path with his cane. “Listen to me, Levin. I hire your
people because you’re the best when it comes to legal hair-splitting. I pay you
more than Judge Berg will earn in his entire righteous life. I don’t care how
you do it, but tomorrow those accounts have to be open.”
Varg
narrowed his eyes, studying Daniel’s profile. “And one more thing. Berg has a
reputation as a dry stick who doesn’t waste words. So why did he spend that
much time scribbling notes all over your filing? I got the feeling you…
communicate. Tell me, Levin—you don’t want me to start my own investigation, do
you?”
“We
communicate in the language of the law, Mark. It’s the only language he
understands,” Daniel clipped out.
“Mm-hmm,”
Varg grunted, and there was a threat in the sound. “By tomorrow morning,
Counselor. And don’t disappoint me. I really don’t like it when my assets get
stuck in the hands of people who think too highly of themselves.”
Chapter
2: Reading Between the Lines
Daniel
Levin wasn’t green. Ten years in the profession—five of them in the economic
crimes unit—had forged him into the kind of lawyer colleagues called “a
scalpel.” Varg had picked him for exactly that: the ability to dissect an
accusation.
But in this
case, the “scalpel” had met granite.
Daniel
spread the pages of the motion beneath a lamp. Judge Berg’s red pencil had left
not mere edits, but a route map through a minefield. “Pg. 8: You’re building
the defense on the precedent ‘Olmstead v. State.’ Deep, but not in this
district. Find the 2019 appellate decision. Don’t be lazy.”
Daniel
rubbed his eyes. This was the handwriting of a man who forgave weakness in no
one, least of all himself.
At two in
the morning, the silence was torn open by the doorbell—short, hard, demanding.
On the
threshold stood a man in a leather jacket Daniel had seen among Varg’s
entourage. Behind him, in the stairwell’s shadow, loomed Mark himself.
“Can’t
sleep, Counselor?” Varg walked in without invitation, shoving past Daniel with
his shoulder. He went straight to the desk and picked up a sheet marked with
the judge’s red notes.
Daniel went
cold. He hadn’t had time to hide it.
“‘Change
your tie,’” Varg read the margin note aloud. His eyes narrowed into two icy
slits. “Odd concern from a judge who, they say, doesn’t forgive even a typo in
a date. Don’t you think, Levin?”
“Judge Berg
has a specific sense of humor,” Daniel said quickly, trying to take the page
back. “He’s mocking my approach. It’s his method of psychological pressure.”
Varg didn’t
let go. He lifted the paper closer to the lamp, studying the handwriting.
“You know
what I value your people for, Levin?” Varg said with a faint smirk, arrogance
seeping through it. “Meticulousness. You sink your teeth into the letter of the
law like it’s your sacred scripture. That’s exactly why I pay you fees like
this. I don’t like Jews, Levin. But I like losing even less.”
Daniel
didn’t even look up from the papers. “My services are expensive not because of
my lineage, Mark, but because I win.”
“Then
explain today’s little show in court,” Varg’s voice dropped, growing quieter
and harder. “Berg shredded your filing to splinters. But he did it strangely.
He didn’t drown you. He… trained you. I saw his look. Judge Berg looks at
everyone in that courtroom like dirt under his fingernails. But he looked at
you differently. There was something personal in his eyes.”
Varg leaned
in, peering into the lawyer’s face. “I pay you so there are no surprises in
court. If you’ve got old scores with that ‘saint’ in the robe—or God forbid,
shared skeletons—say it now. Because if I get the sense my fate depends on your
backstage games, I will destroy you both, regardless of your talents.”
“Judge Berg
has no favorites,” Daniel replied coldly. “He hates unprofessionalism. Today,
he found my work insufficiently clean. By morning, it will be perfect. That’s
all you need to know.”
Varg
drilled him with his gaze for a few more seconds, then stood. “We’ll see. By
nine a.m., I expect unfrozen accounts—not excuses. And put that sheet with the
red scribbling away. It reeks of… continuity. And I prefer my lawyer to be
loyal to one thing only: my wallet.”
When Varg
left, Daniel let out the breath he’d been holding. Cold sweat touched his
collar. Varg didn’t know anything for sure yet, but his animal instinct had
already found the invisible thread.
Chapter
3: Prologue. A Mother’s Name
Twenty
years earlier. Boston. A kitchen in an old brick house on Beacon Hill, steeped
in the smell of cooling coffee and buried under legal reference books.
Abraham
Berg—then still an ambitious assistant district attorney—sat beneath a
low-hanging lamp. Across from him sat Helen Levin, a Boston Globe
journalist whose corruption exposés at City Hall made politicians flinch.
“You can’t
sign this indictment, Abraham,” Helen spoke softly, but there was steel ringing
in her voice. “The evidence against this guy is shaky. You’re building your
career on sand—and it will soak through with an innocent man’s blood.”
“I am
following the letter of the law, Helen,” Abraham didn’t even look up. “If the
police filed a report, I am obligated to move it forward. The court will sort
it out. My job isn’t to sympathize. It’s to follow procedure.”
“Your
procedure kills people!” She sprang up. “You’re turning into a soulless
paragraph. I don’t want our son growing up in a house where they quote
precedents instead of having a conscience.”
Daniel, a
ten-year-old boy hiding in the corridor’s shadow, watched as his father slowly
closed the folder. His face was unreadable—masklike.
“If you
leave now, Helen,” Abraham said in an icy tone, “you will leave into nothing.
My last name gives you—and him—protection in this city. Without it, you’re
nobody.”
“Your last
name is shackles, Abraham.” Helen took her son’s hand, pulling him out of the
shadows. “From today, he’s Levin. My father was a schoolteacher in Brooklyn—he
taught me that truth stands above a career. Daniel will become the kind of
lawyer you can’t buy or intimidate. Because he will know your only
weakness—your blindness to the living human being.”
She stepped
into the cold Boston night without looking back. Abraham remained in the empty
kitchen. He didn’t chase after her. He simply took a red pencil from his pocket
and crossed his wife’s name out of his daily planner.
Chapter
4: An Appeal into the Abyss
Nine a.m.
The courtroom was empty except for the clerk and the bailiffs. Abraham Berg sat
on his dais, unruffled as a sphinx.
Daniel
placed a new draft of the motion on the lectern. He hadn’t slept all night,
building the argument precisely along the “red lines” his father had drawn. It
was a perfect document—armored, logical, immaculate. But Daniel knew: for Berg,
it still wouldn’t be enough. To beat this man, you didn’t merely follow his
advice—you had to jump higher than his head.
“I have
reviewed your corrected document, Mr. Levin,” Berg flipped a page. “This time
you at least made the effort to open the codebook. However…”
The judge
paused, and the room fell so silent Daniel could hear the lamps buzzing under
the ceiling.
“…the
motion is denied. The court finds insufficient grounds to lift the attachment
at this stage of the investigation.”
Daniel felt
blood rush to his face. It was a punch to the gut. He had done everything his
father demanded in those nocturnal notes. He’d “patched the holes,” cut the
epithets, found the 2019 precedent. So why the denial?
“Your
Honor!” Daniel’s voice snapped into steel. “The defense has complied with all
requirements to clarify its positions—”
“The court
has ruled, Mr. Levin. You have the right to appeal. Court is adjourned.”
Berg rose
and left without so much as looking at his son. The clerk approached Daniel and
handed him the folder. Inside, on the last page, beneath the heavy stamp
“DENIED,” a red-pencil note read: “Too predictable. You’re playing by my
rules, and forgetting that I set them. If you want to win—go higher. But
remember: the Supreme Court doesn’t look at handwriting in the margins. It
looks at substance.”
Daniel
gripped the folder until his knuckles went white. The old man had deliberately
chopped the case, forcing him to go to the Supreme Court. Why? Either it was
the highest lesson—or… a trap.
Varg was
waiting in the corridor. He stood by the window, leaning on his cane, watching
cars pass.
“You lost,
Levin,” Varg said without turning. “Again.”
“This isn’t
a loss, Mark. It’s a transition to the next level. We file an appeal with the
Supreme Court within the hour.”
Varg turned
slowly. His face was calm, but an ugly flame lit in his eyes.
“You think
I’m an idiot?” He stepped close. “I saw how you worked. I saw you catching
every word he said. And then I saw him toss you out of the room like a puppy
that’d had an accident. But before that, he wrote something on your papers.
Again.”
Varg
snatched the folder from Daniel’s hands and opened the last page. He stared at
the red handwriting for a long time.
“‘Go
higher,’” Varg whispered as he read. He lifted his eyes to Daniel’s, and
realization flickered there. “That ‘saint’ has the same slant to his letters as
you do in the contract you signed with me. Same habit of placing a period at an
angle.”
Varg
smiled—and that smile was worse than his anger.
“You know,
Levin, I hired private investigators yesterday. Just in case. But now I don’t
need their reports. I can see it all myself. You’re not merely ‘communicating.’
You’re holding a family council right under the robe of justice.”
Varg
grabbed Daniel by the tie—the very one the judge had told him to change.
“You’ll
file that appeal. And your daddy will make sure it’s accepted. Because if my
accounts aren’t clean within forty-eight hours, I’ll publish everything: your
relationship, your secret margin-notes correspondence, your little Jewish scam.
You’ll lose your license, and your father will lose his precious reputation as
an ‘honest judge.’ You’ve got two days, kid. Don’t let the family down.”
Chapter
5: A Courtesy Visit
Abraham
Berg’s house in the Boston suburbs looked like an extension of the man himself:
monumental, cold, ringed by a tall iron fence behind which began a zone of
exclusion. Daniel hadn’t been here in twenty years. As he climbed the steps, he
felt less like a triumphant attorney and more like that ten-year-old boy hiding
in the corridor shadows.
Berg opened
the door himself. He wasn’t wearing a robe—only a severe cardigan—but his gaze
was still judicial: weighing, sentencing. He didn’t let his son in right away,
making him stand on the threshold for several seconds under the cutting Boston
wind.
“You
violated protocol, Daniel,” Abraham said by way of greeting. “A judge and an
attorney don’t meet outside the courtroom unless they share a trough. Did you
come for a bribe—or for sympathy?”
“I came to
discuss your red pencil, Father,” Daniel said, stepping past him into the
entryway.
They ended
up in a study lined with thousands of volumes of legal classics. The air
smelled of old leather and stale solitude. Abraham sat in a deep armchair and
indicated a chair opposite—hard, straight-backed, meant for petitioners.
“Varg
knows,” Daniel didn’t waste time on preamble. “He has the detectives’ reports.
He knows about Boston, about my mother’s name, about the fact that you’re my
father. He thinks he bought us wholesale—one blackmail package for two.”
Abraham
reached for his pipe but didn’t light it. His face didn’t twitch.
“Your
client is a vulgar man,” Berg replied evenly. “But more vulgar still is that
you let him get this close. You wear Helen’s last name so you can seem more
honest than I am. And look at you: you ran to Daddy the moment your rich
anti-Semite backed you into a corner. Your mother…” Abraham paused, and
something like an old, unhealed grievance passed through his voice, “she was
always an idealist. She believed you could fight the system and stay clean. But
you’re not her. You chose Varg’s filth—and now that filth is tracking across my
parquet floors.”
“Don’t drag
her into this,” Daniel’s voice went low and dangerous, like a scalpel’s
whisper. “She left you so she wouldn’t have to watch you turn justice into a
dried herbarium. And I’m not here to save my own skin. I don’t care about my
license—I’ll find a way to survive.”
“I came to
tell you that tomorrow you’ll be standing in front of a mirror. Varg isn’t
simply waiting for a ‘favor.’ He intends to rope you into complicity. If you
rule in his favor, you’ll become his puppet. If you rule against him, he’ll
dump the story to the press: how ‘incorruptible’ Judge Berg secretly trained
his son-attorney for years through the margins of court filings. Your
forty-year career, every judgment you ever handed down, your ‘holy letter of
the law’—all of it will turn into farce. They won’t remember you as a great
judge, but as an old hypocrite who ran a family subcontract in a courtroom.”
“My career
is a rock, Daniel. Men bigger than your developer have shattered themselves
against it,” Abraham finally looked Daniel in the eyes. “You want me to be
afraid? You want me to rule in his favor to save your license? You still
haven’t understood my lesson. In the margins of your filings, I wasn’t writing
advice. I was writing a diagnosis of your weakness.”
“You pushed
the case into the Supreme Court yourself!” Daniel snapped. “You knew I’d
appeal. You drove us into this trap!”
Abraham was
silent for a long time, staring into the fire in the fireplace. His face looked
like a frozen mask.
“Your
mother taught you to fight for truth,” he said quietly. “But I taught you that
truth without procedure is just noise. Varg thinks he’s the hunter. But he’s
only evidence. You want to come out of this case alive, Daniel? Or do you want
to come out of it as an attorney?”
“I want you
to stop being a teacher for five minutes and be a father,” Daniel’s voice
shook.
“You have
no father. You have only the presiding judge.”
Abraham
lifted his gaze slowly. There was no fear in it, but there was a heavy
understanding: his son was striking the system’s sorest nerve—its reputation.
“So what do
you propose, Levin?” He spoke the surname like a legal term. “That I commit
suicide before Varg does it for me?”
“I propose
you stop playing teacher,” Daniel said, leaning forward, each word cleanly cut.
“Tomorrow, in the Supreme Court, I’ll do my job. I’ll win under all your rules.
I’ll force them to unfreeze the accounts. And you… you need to decide what
matters more: your spotless robe, or the fact that somewhere behind that robe
there’s still a heart that once loved a woman named Levin.”
Abraham
stood, signaling the audience was over.
“Go write
your appeal. Write it so the Supreme Court won’t have to hunt for excuses for
your client. Write it so Varg believes in your loyalty. And I… I will do what
Judge Berg must do.”
When Daniel
was already at the door, Abraham added without turning around:
“Your
mother would be proud of your stubbornness. But she would despise you for this
visit. Don’t come here again. We’ll see each other at trial.”
Chapter
6: Freedom by Protocol
The
Massachusetts Supreme Court’s chamber did not tolerate fuss. Here, under high
vaults, it wasn’t people’s fates that were decided, but the fates of legal
principles. Mark Varg sat beside Daniel, radiating the confidence of a predator
who’d cornered a forester. He gave Daniel a barely noticeable nod, reminding
him of the “family duty.”
Daniel
rose. His argument was surgically precise. He didn’t appeal to justice—he
struck at the lower court’s procedural errors, at those very “red lines” his
father had drawn. “The law cannot be selective,” Daniel hammered out. “If the
prosecution violated the procedure for attaching assets, the assets must be
returned. Otherwise, we are not judging a person—we are judging his wallet.”
It was
brilliant. The Supreme Court justices did not deliberate long. The presiding
justice read the decision: the appeal was granted, the accounts unfrozen, all
restrictions on Mark Varg lifted.
Varg smiled
in triumph and reached to clap Daniel on the shoulder. “You’re a good son,
Levin,” he whispered. “Daddy can be proud.”
But at that
moment, the heavy oak doors swung open. Into the court’s silence came the thud
of heavy boots. A tactical team and two plainclothes detectives surrounded the
defense table.
“Mark Varg,
you are under arrest on suspicion of first-degree murder,” a detective said
loudly, snapping handcuffs onto the developer’s wrists.
The room
erupted. Varg—who a second ago had been the master of his life—went pale. “This
is a mistake! Levin, do something! Tell them!”
A detective
slammed a folder of photographs onto the table: night shots, the “Riverside”
construction site, Varg holding a pistol, and a body disappearing into fresh
concrete. “We had authorization for covert surveillance for the past
forty-eight hours,” the detective added. “We were waiting until you got your
hands dirty yourself, Mark.”
Varg,
already being hauled toward the exit, turned back to Daniel. In his eyes there
was frantic hope and an order: You’re my lawyer. Get me out.
Daniel
calmly gathered his papers into his briefcase. He looked Varg straight in the
eyes—steady, cold. “My contract with you, Mark, concerned only the account
freeze. I fulfilled it flawlessly. Your property is free.”
“You can’t
dump me! Draft a new contract! Any money!” Varg shouted before they shoved him
out of the chamber.
“There will
be no new contracts,” Daniel said quietly into the hollow of the courtroom. “I
no longer work for people who confuse the law with a service.”
Epilogue:
Outside the Protocol
A small bar
on the edge of town—no neon signs, no expensive cocktails. In the corner, at a
table with a worn surface, Abraham Berg sat with a glass of neat whiskey in
front of him.
Daniel sat
opposite. He looked exhausted, but for the first time in years his shoulders
were not tight.
“Congratulations
on your victory in the Supreme Court,” Abraham said without lifting his eyes.
“Your argument on the accounts was… acceptable. A B-plus.”
“Thank you,
‘Your Honor,’” Daniel gave a bitter half-smile. “The police, the surveillance
at the construction site… was that your plan?”
Abraham
finally looked up. His eyes behind the glasses remained unreadable, but deep
inside them Daniel saw something like respect.
“I had
nothing to do with it,” Berg cut in. “It was a pure police investigation. The
prosecution had Varg for months. They were simply waiting until he felt safe
and did something stupid. The law isn’t me, Daniel. The law is a
self-regulating system. Varg thought he was above the system—and the system
digested him.”
“And you?”
Daniel asked. “You risked the robe. You knew he could leak our story any
minute.”
“The robe
is just fabric,” Abraham sipped his whiskey. “But your last filing… you finally
stopped hunting for loopholes and started defending a principle. Your mother…
she would say you finally learned how to use your name.”
Daniel was
silent. He understood that this was the maximum tenderness the old man was
capable of.
“So, we
won’t be communicating through the margins of motions anymore?” Daniel asked.
Abraham
Berg set his glass down and stood. “Tomorrow, I have a hearing on a fraud case.
If your filing is speckled with epithets again, Daniel, I won’t spare the red
pencil.”
Berg left
the bar, his shoulders slightly more stooped than usual. Daniel stayed by the
window. The bill lay on the table. He took out a pen and, before paying, out of
habit crossed out an extra comma on the receipt.
The teacher’s shadow was gone. Only the law remained.
