Chapter 4

That night, Kevin sent me a livestream link.

"Horace, this is bad. You'd better take a look."

"Anita Chavez is livestreaming, and she's trying to blow this whole thing up."

I clicked in. More than three thousand people were already watching at once.

Anita sat in front of the camera, eyes swollen up like walnuts.

She had her son tucked against her, and she gave him a pinch so he wailed out loud on cue.

Behind her was that little store of hers, my charity water still stacked on the shelves, the labels not even fully peeled off.

A man holding a gimbal stood off to the side, his voice pumped up from behind the lens.

"Ladies, today I'm bringing you a real story!"

"The blood and tears of a single mom fighting for her rights!"

Anita sniffed at the camera.

"It's hard, being a woman raising a kid and running a store alone, and he saw right off that we were easy to push around..."

The comments scrolled by, all of them poor thing, sister and stand with the single mom and dox that heartless store owner.

Then my phone started buzzing.

Unknown numbers, one after another, ringing twice and cutting off, then ringing again.

Texts flooded in, filth I couldn't stand to read.

"People who make dirty money die badly."

"Bullying a woman and a kid. You're not scared your whole line dies out?"

"Hope your whole family ends up in urns. You can carry one in each hand to parent-teacher night!"

Someone even posted a photo of my ID in the livestream comments.

Name, number, home address.

Someone dug up my school's website, screenshotted the student info page, and put it up.

"Look, this is the scumbag who bullies a woman and a kid."

"And he's a law student, no less!"

The comments piled up over a hundred deep, and the one pinned at the very top read:

"Probably some rich woman's kept boy. Where else would a student get the money to open a store?"

I stared at those words, something jammed tight in my throat.

Then a classmate sent me a link, a thread on the school forum.

"Title: A student surnamed Fernandez at our school involved in charity fraud. Watch out."

There were already more than two hundred replies under it.

Some said he should be expelled.

Some said a person like that had no business studying law, that he was a disgrace to the school.

Some said they'd seen bad character in his face all along.

And Anita, when she saw that my personal info tied me to law, froze for a second too.

Like she suddenly felt guilty.

But it passed fast, chased off by the sense she could still get away with it, and she went right back to accusing me on camera.

I turned my phone face-down.

But it wasn't over.

The next morning I got to the shop and the first thing I saw was red spread all over the ground.

Paint had run in through the gaps in the roll-down door, pooling into a little puddle at the entrance, a dozen or more mosquitoes stuck in it and drowned.

The air had a sharp chemical stink that made me cough twice.

The breakfast lady next door poked her head out and looked at me, started to say something, then pulled it back inside.

When the courier came with my delivery, he stopped in the doorway for a long while, then set the package on the ground and kicked it over to me with his foot.

"Someone filed a complaint against me. Said if I keep delivering to your store they'll report me."

"This is the last batch. After this... you'll have to understand."

Late that morning Russ Dickerson from property management came, standing at the door hesitating for a long time.

"Mr. Fernandez,"

"Anita's blown this up so big online. The higher-ups told me to come tell you."

"This store, do you want to close it for a few days, wait for things to blow over?"

"Property management here... we're just afraid something happens."

"Afraid of what happening?"

Russ rubbed his hands together.

"Yesterday someone called the property office. Said if we shield you, they'd expose property management along with you."

"The higher-ups are under a lot of pressure."

I looked at him and nodded.

"Fine. I understand."

After he left, I pulled the roll-down door halfway shut, crouched at the entrance, and started scraping the paint with a putty knife.

I poured gasoline over it, the paint skin wrinkled, and it came up in flakes, like scaling a fish.

I crouched there over an hour, my back aching so bad I couldn't straighten it, the paint fumes giving me a headache, my mind buzzing.

Halfway through, my phone rang.

My mom.

"Horace."

Her voice was shaking.

"Your dad saw the stuff online, and his blood pressure shot right up."

"He's on an IV at the hospital in town now."

"Didn't you say the summer thing was just a little business, selling a few things to work your way through school?"

"How'd you end up mixed up with some dirty poison water?"

"The relatives back home have caught wind of it too."

"They're asking if you got dragged into some illegal operation. You have to be careful."

I gripped the putty knife, one hand smeared with paint, sticky.

"Is Dad's condition serious?"

"The doctor says he has to stay two days. Don't worry."

She paused.

"Son, if it comes to it, can't we just quit?"

"Close the store and come home. We're not short that little bit of money. Don't let people trample on you."

I crouched at the shop door, the putty knife resting on my knee.

People came and went in front of me.

Some walked fast, some slowed down to glance at me and then looked away.

I kept my head down, picking at the dried paint crust on the knife with my fingers, prying off a little flake of red shell.

"Mom,"

I said,

"as long as Dad's okay. Stop looking at that stuff online. It's all fake."

"I know it's fake, Mom knows it's fake, but..."

"Mom, I can handle this myself."

I hung up and threw the knife into the trash.

I pulled the roll-down door shut, the metal slamming down with a clang.

Anita's store was closed too, a sign on it that read Temporarily Closed, Fighting for Our Rights.

I've studied law for three years, memorized all those statutes, written all those case analyses. Isn't this exactly the kind of moment it's all for?

I lay down on the folding cot behind the shelves and stared at the ceiling.

Kindness isn't an obligation.

Since you don't want kindness, then we'll let the law do the talking.

Everything I need to file the case, I've already got ready.

The moment it's light, it officially begins.