Chapter 6 - The Counter-Offensive
When I arrived at Eleanor’s penthouse on the Upper East Side, the atmosphere was like a war room.
Michael Levin was sitting at the glass dining table with two junior associates, three laptops open, and thick stacks of financial spreadsheets scattered around him. Grandma Eleanor was sitting in a velvet armchair, calmly sipping Earl Grey tea while reviewing a legal brief.
“They targeted your job,” Eleanor said before I even had a chance to sit down.
“You saw it?” I asked.
“Michael’s PR team flagged it at 2:00 AM,” Eleanor said, placing her tea cup down with a soft clink. “Your mother thinks she can play corporate chess with me. She forgets that I was managing commercial real estate in Manhattan when she was still in pigtails.”
Michael Levin turned his laptop toward me. “Arya, your mother and sister committed three distinct illegal acts last night alone.”
He pointed to the screen.
“First, entering your apartment without your explicit consent to retrieve personal property—even with a key—constitutes criminal trespass and burglary in the second degree, especially given the note left as evidence,” Michael explained. “Second, Madison’s video constitutes defamation per se, as it directly damaged your professional standing and falsely accused you of a crime involving child endangerment. Third, your mother contacting your employer through third-party accounts constitutes tortious interference with business relations.”
“We can destroy them in court, Arya,” Michael continued. “We can file an emergency injunction, a defamation suit, and criminal charges by noon.”
I looked at Grandma Eleanor. “Is that what you want to do?”
Eleanor smiled—a slow, cold, brilliant smile that gave me goosebumps.
“No,” Eleanor said. “Court takes months. Public opinion takes hours. Victoria wants to use social media to intimidate you into staying quiet. So, we are going to use the truth to destroy her narrative before lunch.”
“How?” I asked.
Eleanor turned to Michael. “Release the receipts.”
Within thirty minutes, Michael’s firm executed a masterclass in crisis management.
Instead of filing a slow legal response, we issued a formal statement through an established PR firm, complete with high-resolution attachments.
We uploaded the timestamped text message from Victoria explicitly stating: “Madison will be using your car until I decide otherwise. Stop being difficult. Uber works fine for you.”
We uploaded the official DMV vehicle registration showing my name as the sole owner.
We uploaded the security footage from my apartment building showing my mother entering my lobby at 1:15 AM using an unauthorized key, and leaving twenty minutes later with a folder under her arm.
And finally, we uploaded the official NYPD incident report signed by the officers at the Regency Hotel.
The headline on the press release read:
“OFFICIAL STATEMENT REGARDING DEFAMATORY CLAIMS AGAINST ARYA MONTGOMERY: FULL DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE OF ASSET SEIZURE AND UNAUTHORIZED TRES-PASS.”
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We tagged Madison’s Instagram account, Victoria’s high-society charity pages, and every single news outlet that had picked up Madison’s initial sob story.
The internet, as it always does, turned in an instant.
