“He made a mistake. The forgery. I know how to prove it.” Casimir caught the sound before it left his throat. The envelope slipped against his fingers, resting on the dark finish beside her blotter. Her stare was steady, cleared of the exhaustion from an hour earlier. It was the look of a predator spotting a fatal weakness, a familiar, terrifying intensity he had grown to admire. “How?” he asked, his voice a low, even murmur, masking the frantic flutter beneath his ribs. She pushed herself to her feet, moving with the coiled energy of a spring released. “Radek’s key witness supposedly signed an affidavit admitting prior misconduct with the conglomerate. The statement entered into the record this morning. But the man was in a clinic two districts away when the ink supposedly dried. I can prove his whereabouts.” Casimir felt a cold dread settle. “That’s not enough. Radek will claim Jelinek signed it earlier, or that it was notarized remotely. He’s too good at obfuscation.” Lenka walked to her expansive window, staring out at the rain-streaked concrete towers of Kavalina. “No. This is better. Think about it. Miroslav Radek is arrogant. He believes he’s infallible. He’s meticulous, but he has one glaring blind spot: himself. He chose a file that would humiliate the witness and, by extension, me. A statement about a minor financial indiscretion, designed to look like a betrayal.” She turned, her eyes gleaming. “But Radek never does anything without a secondary motive. He needed to prove Jelinek was untrustworthy. The genuine text isn't about our witness at all. He adapted a heavily altered piece of conglomerate paperwork, swapping names and dates to manufacture guilt. He just substituted names and dates.” “A genuine filing?” Casimir asked, fitting the pieces together. “The shell company records you checked last week?” “Precisely,” Lenka affirmed, a rare, fierce smile gracing her lips. “Radek thinks he’s so clever, using a real template for his fake. But the internal formatting, the way certain clauses are phrased… they betray the original context. It’s too specific for Jelinek’s alleged minor offense. It screams corporate malfeasance. He repurposed an old internal audit, then swapped the particulars. The unredacted version will expose the whole maneuver.” A sharp sting flared behind Casimir's left temple, the familiar warning bell ringing in his skull. He focused on her reasoning. “You believe that unredacted prototype still sits in the archives.” “It has to,” Lenka said, her voice dropping to a low, intense register. “Radek wouldn’t destroy the source material completely. He’d keep it as leverage, a blueprint for future manipulations. He probably has it stashed somewhere secure, believing it’s untouchable. The Ministry’s sub-basement stacks are vast. If it survived, it sits under a dormant commercial fraud designation, not a criminal docket.” They worked through the night, a silent, efficient partnership. Lenka outlined the legal strategy, a precise surgical strike designed to expose Radek’s method. Casimir sifted through microfiche indexes, tracking subsidiary filings from a decade back. In an unindexed box log, he flagged an internal inquiry codenamed 'Project Chimera.' It was enough. In the morning, the courtroom buzzed with an almost feverish anticipation. The Grendel Holdings case, already a high-profile battle, had devolved into a spectacle after the previous day’s events. Lenka, composed and sharp in her dark robes, addressed the judge. “Your Honor, the state submits that yesterday's sworn affidavit from the witness is a fabrication.” A ripple went through the gallery. Miroslav Radek, standing at his own table, smirked, a picture of confident disdain. “Objection, Your Honor,” Radek sneered. “The state offered verified proof. Counsel is grasping at shadows.” “Your Honor,” Lenka continued, her voice clear and resonant, “we can establish both the filing's fraudulent nature and opposing counsel's direct manipulation.” She then laid out her argument with devastating precision. She called an archivist who pointed out conflicting digital watermarks in the print run. Then she produced the unredacted Chimera audit Casimir had pulled from the basement stacks. Its contents, while unrelated to Jelinek’s alleged minor offense, contained identical phrasing and formatting to Radek’s forged affidavit. The underlying report named a senior director, outlining systemic kickbacks rather than petty theft. “Opposing counsel,” Lenka stated, “took a sensitive corporate audit detailing executive embezzlement, redacted key headers, and inserted our witness’s name to destroy his credibility.” The courtroom erupted. Radek’s smugness vanished, replaced by a livid, cornered fury. He knew he was trapped. His career, his reputation, all of it was crumbling around him. The judge struggled to restore order, gaveling furiously. Lenka stood tall, triumphant, her gaze meeting Casimir’s across the room. He offered her a faint, proud smile, and his head throbbed in response. Radek slammed an open palm onto his desk. “Your Honor! The court must examine the tainted methods behind this filing. Counsel is taking instruction from an unstable assistant!” Before anyone could react, he held up a folder. ““The confidential health profile of Casimir Volkov, her assistant. Chronic neurovascular degeneration, prone to sudden physical collapse under nominal cognitive strain.” He is a man who cannot even handle basic stress, let alone the pressures of this court. Is this the man Ms. Hradek relies on for her ‘brilliant’ new evidence? Is she so compromised that she seeks aid from such a… broken individual?” The chamber turned toward him. The hum of muttering swelled, thick and pressing. Casimir's vision tunneled as a surge of protective fury for Lenka tightened across his throat. A needle of white heat drove behind his ear. The overhead tubes smeared into blinding rings. His ribs locked, and the floor dropped away beneath his boots. A shoulder grazed his as Pav vaulted from the middle gallery bench. “Casimir!” Pav yelled, shoving past the mahogany partition. Casimir’s knees folded, the polished stone spinning upward. The last thing he saw was Lenka. Her face, a mask of horror and disbelief, as Radek’s cruel words echoed. Her victory, moments from being secured, abandoned. She didn’t hesitate. She shoved back from the bar, dark wool snapping against the counsel bench, ignoring the gavel and the bailiffs as she broke into a run. She was on her knees beside him, her hands fumbling at his collar, her face inches from his, tears streaming down her cheeks. The court, the case, the world, all faded into a distant thrum. All that remained was her pale face, her fingers gripping his lapels, her voice ragged in the graying air. “Casimir, stay with me.”

Unscheduled Feelings