Objection My Lord

Chapter 4: Foundations

The office was silent long after Hillary Fischer’s footsteps faded down the hall.

Daya sat in her chair, motionless, the weight of Whitmore’s ultimatum pressing against her ribs like a physical thing. If she lost to Fischer again, he wouldn’t just walk away with another verdict—he’d walk into her firm, into her world, and take everything she had bled for.

She leaned back, staring at the ceiling until her vision blurred. The mask she wore in court, in front of Whitmore, in front of him, slipped. Her jaw trembled. Her fists unclenched, leaving crescents carved into her palms.

For the first time in years, she felt small.

She stood abruptly, restless energy buzzing beneath her skin, and crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The city stretched out beneath her: towers of glass and steel, traffic lights flickering red and green, a blur of life that kept moving forward whether she triumphed or failed.

Her reflection stared back at her in the glass—hard eyes, sleek bun, suit still immaculate despite the day’s battle. A woman who looked untouchable. A woman who wasn’t real.

Because beneath it all, she was still the girl who came from nothing.

She could see it so clearly—the cramped one-bedroom apartment that had never been warm enough in winter, the hum of the radiator that rattled like it was ready to collapse. Her mother, hunched over a kitchen table stacked with overdue bills, her face lined with exhaustion far older than her years.

Daya had been seven the first time she realized life was unfair in ways the world never fixed and that the rich would always triumph over the poor and tragically it had to accompany her dad's death. Her mother’s employer had also docked two weeks’ pay over a “clerical error.” Her mother didn’t fight back. Couldn’t. She couldn’t afford a lawyer, couldn’t risk losing the job altogether.

Daya remembered standing in that tiny kitchen, watching her mother’s hands tremble as she tried to stretch what little was left to cover rent. Something in her had burned then—hot, unrelenting, uncontainable.

If knowledge was power, then law was a weapon.

And she swore she would wield it better than anyone.

The years after were nothing but grit. Scholarships. Late nights studying in libraries that smelled like dust and ink. Part-time jobs that barely paid enough for food but bought the textbooks she couldn’t live without. She clawed her way into law school, then into Whitmore & Hale—one of the most ruthless firms in the city.

Every case won was a rung higher. Every long night in the office was another brick in the fortress she built around herself. She’d cut off pieces of her life—sleep, friends, softness—until there was nothing left but steel.

She had built herself from ashes, and she wasn’t about to let Hillary Fischer reduce her to dust.

The thought of him ignited a different fire.

His smirk in the courtroom, his voice low and taunting in her office, his certainty that he couldn’t be beaten. He unsettled her in a way no opposing counsel ever had—not just because he was good. Brilliant, even. But because he had seen her in a moment of weakness. In a bar, with her guard down. He had touched her, kissed her, stripped her armor away before she even knew his name.

And now he stood on the other side of the battlefield, daring her to falter again.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. No. She would not break. Not for Whitmore’s approval. Not for her client’s loyalty. Not for Fischer’s smug, infuriating eyes.

Especially not for him.

The city lights blinked back at her, cold and unfeeling. She straightened her spine, smoothing the crease of her suit with steady hands.

Failure wasn’t an option. Not for the girl who had watched her mother break under the weight of injustice. Not for the woman who had fought her way here with nothing but grit and fire.

The next case was coming, and she would win it. She had to.

But as she turned away from the window, she couldn’t shake the thought that haunted her more than Whitmore’s threat, more than her client’s betrayal, more than the possibility of losing everything.

Why did Hillary Fischer—her rival, her enemy—make her heart beat faster than victory ever had?