CHAPTER 1 — THE FALL
889 Words
Ottoline Vasser stood in Halvard Prynn's conference room and watched eight months of hard work disappear in a few seconds right before her eyes. Everything felt fast and sudden.
The Opposing counsel slid a folder across the table like he already knew what was inside it.
"The Bramfield evidence log is missing three entries. Dated the week before your client signed. Convenient."
Ottoline didn't touch the folder. She didn't need to. She had built that evidence log herself. She had checked it twice before filing it.
"That log was complete when I sent it in."
The lawyer shrugged like it didn't matter to him.
"Then someone changed it after you filed. Or before. Either way, your client agreed to a merger based on numbers that don't exist anymore. The judge isn't going to like that."
Her boss, Halvard Prynn, said nothing. That was strange. Halvard always had something to say.
Twenty minutes later, the judge threw out the case for good.
Ottoline walked out of the courtroom holding a case that no longer existed. Halvard walked ahead of her the whole way and wouldn't look at her.
"Halvard."
He didn't stop walking until they reached his office.
"Close the door."
She closed it.
"Someone changed that log. I want it investigated before this firm gets accused of malpractice."
He sat down like the conversation was already finished.
"There won't be an investigation. There's also not going to be you here. Not after today."
She laughed, short and disbelieving.
"You're firing me. For someone else's sabotage."
He still wouldn't look at her.
"I'm firing you because a client just lost forty million dollars on your case. Someone above me wants this handled quietly. That's what's happening."
She stepped closer to his desk.
"Someone above you. Who."
He finally looked up, and something in his face wasn't quite guilty. It looked more like fear.
"Clean out your office by five. I'm sorry, Ottoline. I really am."
She didn't cry in his office. She didn't cry in the elevator, or on the street, or in the back of the cab that took her somewhere she hadn't gone in over a year.
Onyx didn't have a sign outside. It didn't need one. The kind of people who came here already knew where to find it.
The doorman recognized her right away, from a version of her life she used to have, before her father died, before the firm took over every hour of her day.
"Ms. Vasser. Been a while."
"Too long," she said, and walked straight to the bar.
Two drinks turned into four. The bartender stopped asking if she wanted water after the second one.
The music thudded up through the floor into her shoes, and for a while she stopped thinking about Bramfield, or Halvard, or a client who had just lost forty million dollars over something that wasn't her fault.
She noticed a man around her fourth drink.
He wasn't dancing. He didn't seem to be drinking either. He just stood at the edge of the balcony above the dance floor, watching the room the way someone watches something that already belongs to him. Dark suit, no tie, completely still while everyone around him looked like they were trying too hard.
He was watching her.
She knew she should look away. Instead she lifted her glass slightly, an invitation she never would have made sober, and watched him decide whether to come over.
He came down.
Up close he was even more striking. Sharp jaw, dark eyes, the kind of face that didn't need charm because it had something colder that worked just as well. He didn't tell her his name. He didn't ask for hers either.
"Bad day." Not a question.
"Bad year." She finished her drink. "Do you always look at women like you're deciding whether to buy them?"
Something flickered behind his eyes, maybe amusement, maybe something else.
"Only the ones worth the trouble."
"Careful. I bite when I'm sober."
"You're not sober."
"No," she agreed, and let him take the empty glass from her hand. "I'm really not."
He set the glass down without asking. His hand found her waist without asking either, and she realized she didn't want him to ask. Not tonight. Not after today.
"What's your name," she asked.
He leaned in close, his mouth near her ear, so she felt the words more than heard them.
"Does it matter tonight?"
It didn't. That was the problem. It was the last clear thought she had before the room started to tilt in a way that had nothing to do with the music. Four drinks had never hit her like this before. Neither had five.
"I think…." she said, the words slower now, dragging, "....I had too much."
"I've got you." His arm came around her before her knees gave out, calm and certain, like he had expected this exact moment all night. "Let's get you somewhere quiet."
She should have said no. Some small, sober part of her tried to say it and couldn't get the word out in time.
The last thing Ottoline Vasser remembered, before the night went dark and stayed dark, was his voice near her hair, low and pleased, saying something she wouldn't understand until it was much too late.
"I've been waiting three years for tonight.”
- Writer
