For a moment, no one moved and then the two women tentatively walked out into the rain. Shielding their hair with their handbags, they both swallowed hard at the sheer fury they saw in the other woman’s eyes.

“They’ve ruined my fucking life!” she roared, pointing to the upper floors of the building. “This is bullshit, Fran, and you know it!”

“You need to calm—”

“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down! Don’t you dare! Those bastards just sentenced me to Hell, and there’s not one fucking thing I can do about it!”

“There are still ways—”

“I’ve run out of time!” the brunette bellowed. “You told me two years ago we could win this. You said there was no fucking way the mediators wouldn’t agree, but you were wrong. Those fucking bastards sided with him.”

“But we did win,” Francesca Neary said as she moved one step closer to her client.

Incensed, the woman marched over, stopping just short of plowing into her lawyer. Pointing her finger in Francesca’s face, she leaned in until their noses almost touched. “You call this winning? Really? Winning is me walking away with everything I rightfully own and him not getting what he wanted, but that’s not the case, is it Fran? Unless I do what those bastards insist I must, I lose every fucking thing I hold important. Everything I’ve worked for, everything that is my birthright to have, I lose, and you have the audacity to stand there and say that we’ve won? Tell me something, Fran. Just how many people did you have to shag to get that law degree of yours?”

A crowd had not yet gathered, but Francesca Neary could see that a few people had stopped to gawk, and more than one was whispering to the person standing next to them, pointing at the woman they no doubt now recognized. Although livid her abilities as a lawyer were being challenged, Fran knew better than to start an argument in the middle of the street. Lowering her voice, she spoke as calmly as her anger would allow. “I think that our best plan of attack is to go back to the office and discuss this. Talk about our options—”

“What options! You said it yourself...every bloody loophole has been sewn shut. Every particle of speech has been examined under a microscope, and there are no mistakes. It’s airtight, and you know it.”

“I’ll keep looking. I won’t give up.”

“Oh, that’s just bloody great, Francesca!” the woman said, waving her arms in the air. “You keep looking while I watch my entire life go down the toilet, but I have a question for you. Will you keep looking even after I cease paying you?”

“It’s not going to come to that.”