Adrien had been my attorney for seven years, though “attorney” doesn’t fully cover what he had become in my life. He handled acquisitions, entity formation, contracts, and the occasional emergency when wealthy people behaved like unsupervised children in expensive shoes. He was forty-two, sharp, impossible to rush, and built like a man who had once rowed crew at an elite college and never quite abandoned the posture. If he had one flaw, it was that he enjoyed being right in ways most people would find unsporting. Fortunately, rightness is a useful trait in counsel.
“My stepmother moved into my beach house this morning,” I said, “reassigned my bedroom, and brought her daughter’s skincare refrigerator.”
There was a pause.
Then: “I’m going to need that repeated at a speed my legal education can process.”
I repeated it.
When I finished, Adrien let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a curse. “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Are they legal occupants?”
“No.”
“Good. Then why do I feel there’s a second call coming hidden inside this first call?”
Because months earlier, after my father’s heart scare, I had asked Adrien to quietly review a transfer deed tied to my father’s Del Mar property.