Daniel blocked the open elevator doors with one arm, waiting for my answer.
I pulled my phone from my coat pocket and tapped the red square on the screen. The recording timer stopped at forty-two seconds.
"I choose to save this file to a secure cloud server," I said, holding the screen up to his face. "Extortion is a felony in this state."
Daniel's jaw clamped shut. "A recording in a public hallway is inadmissible without two-party consent."
"We are in a federal building," I countered. "And you just offered a quid pro quo to manipulate a government proceeding. I am sure the SEC will love hearing this tape before they approve your stock offering."
Daniel's eyes narrowed. "You have zero leverage, Grace. The board already wrote you off as a liability."
"Then let the board listen to the recording," I said.
He dropped his arm, letting the metal doors slide closed between us.
Ten minutes later, I sat in the windowless legal consultation room down the hall. Maya dropped a thirty-page settlement packet onto the scratched wooden table. The thick stack of paper landed with a heavy thud.
"The audio recording gives us leverage in family court, but it does not stop the federal machinery," Maya said, tapping a bright yellow sticky note on the top page. "His fraud report already triggered an automatic denial of your naturalization. They issued a Notice to Appear."
The thick black letters on the government header seemed to sharpen. "He wants me deported before the bell rings on Wall Street."
"He wants you broke," Maya corrected. She flipped to page twenty-eight and pointed to a highlighted paragraph. "Look at the marital property division. He is offering a flat thirty-thousand-dollar relocation fee."
"Thirty thousand."
"In exchange for you signing away all claims to the IPO equity." Maya crossed her arms. "The shares are valued at eighty million. He wants to buy out thirteen years of your life for the price of a used sedan."
"I paid twenty-seven thousand just to keep the electricity on and the rent paid during his first year of development," I said, my voice hardening. "I cashed out my severance package to buy his servers."
"And he is banking on the fact that you cannot fight a corporate legal team from a deportation holding cell," Maya said. "He chose his moment carefully. He knows the immigration review will drain your finances before we even reach divorce discovery."
"So he starves me out."
"Exactly," Maya said. "He is using the government as his personal collection agency."
The heavy door swung inward, hitting the rubber wall stop with a loud smack. Owen walked into the small room, bypassing the empty chairs. He dropped a manila folder right on top of the settlement packet.
"I need you to proofread my personal statement," Owen said.
Maya's expression hardened. "This is a restricted legal area."
Owen ignored her and kept his eyes on me. "The pre-law track at Georgetown requires a supplemental essay on overcoming adversity. I drafted three pages. You need to fix the grammar by tonight."
I looked at the printed pages spilling out of his folder. "You just testified against me in a federal fraud hearing, and now you want me to edit your college application?"
"It is a pre-law program," Owen corrected, tapping the top sheet. "And you always edit my essays. Dad is terrible at formatting."
"I am not touching your paper, Owen."
"You have to," he insisted, pulling out a chair and sitting across from me. "The portal closes tomorrow. You know I struggle with the transition paragraphs."
"Ask your father to hire a tutor with his eighty million dollars."
"A tutor does not know my voice," Owen argued, leaning back and crossing his arms. "You do. You wrote my entire AP History final last year. Just fix the transitions and email it back to me."
"You just tried to have me deported," I said. "And you want me to polish your grammar."
Owen leaned over the table, planting both palms on the scratched wood. "You should just do it. Because if you do not sign Dad's property agreement, I am submitting a supplemental affidavit to Officer Davis."
"A supplemental affidavit," I repeated.
"Yeah." Owen smiled, a thin, cruel line across his face. "I will tell them you threatened me. I will say you tried to physically intimidate a minor to force my dad into giving you stock options."
Maya pulled her phone out. "I am calling security."
"Call them," Owen challenged, not breaking eye contact with me. "I am seventeen. Who do you think a judge will believe? A distressed teenager, or a disgruntled immigrant trying to steal an eighty-million-dollar company?"
The sheer calculation in his voice froze the air in the room. He was weaponizing every single year I spent raising him. Every packed lunch, every doctor's appointment, every late-night tutoring session—he twisted it all into a new blade.
"You want to claim I threatened you," I said.
"I will say you screamed at me in the kitchen," Owen replied smoothly, as if reciting a rehearsed script. "I will say you threw a plate. Domestic disturbance. That automatically disqualifies you from any visa appeal."
I placed my hand flat over his essay. I slid the pages across the table until they hit his chest.
"Take it," I said.
Owen frowned, refusing to pick up the paper. "Sign the agreement, Grace."
"If you want to be a lawyer, learn to write your own fiction," I told him, keeping my gaze locked on his. "Submit the affidavit. Tell them I threatened you. But you will stand in front of a federal officer and answer for every single word."
"You think I will not do it?"
"I think you are a coward hiding behind your father's money," I answered. "And I think you know exactly what happens to a pre-law applicant who gets caught lying under oath in a federal proceeding."
Owen's confidence faltered for a fraction of a second. His fingers twitched against the edge of the folder.
Before he could respond, the door opened again. A uniformed ICE officer stepped into the tight space, holding a clipboard. He glanced at Owen, then fixed his attention on me.
"Grace Lin?" the officer asked.
"Yes," I said.
He unclipped a pair of carbon-copy forms and set them on the edge of the table. "Your status adjustment has been formally revoked pending investigation. You have two administrative options."
Maya stood up. "We are filing an immediate appeal."
