Chapter 4

I stepped back from the ledge.

I closed the stream and opened the DM. My hands were shaking.

Is this real?

The reply came instantly. My name is Damian Blackwood. You know who I am, Ms. Harrington.

Of course I knew him. Damian Blackwood — the top criminal defense attorney in Manhattan. Capital cases, federal prosecutions. Undefeated.

Why would Damian Blackwood help me? We'd never spoken.

He followed up with attachments. I opened them.

A Canadian marriage certificate. Julian Sterling and Vivienne Ashford. Vancouver city hall. Three months old.

Married in the United States. Remarried in Canada.

Cross-border bigamy — and yes, prosecutable.

But —

I laughed, bitterly. What does it matter. Julian was right. I can't beat his money.

He didn't argue. He sent an address.

I drove there. I pushed open the door of a corner office on the seventy-second floor of a Midtown tower and saw him.

He was behind a dark-wood desk, tall, straight-shouldered, radiating the kind of don't come closer energy you can feel from across a room. I stepped back instinctively.

He didn't look up. He gestured at the stacked folders on the desk.

"Everything you need on Sterling and Ashford. The Vancouver filings, the forged affidavit of single status he submitted in Canada. Bigamy plus felony forgery of a government document. Stacked right, he's looking at three to four years of federal time."

"Mr. Blackwood. I know this is strong evidence. But Julian has money and people. I can't—"

That got his attention. He looked up, and his eyes were dark and still, and the faintest edge of disdain moved at the corner of his mouth.

"Money? He built his company on a woman's savings. He's a bully who only picks on people who can't hit back."

He slid a heavy cream business card across the desk. Damian Blackwood. Under the name, a single minimalist crest.

The Blackwood crest. One of the oldest banking families on the East Coast.

My head snapped up. I couldn't speak.

Damian leaned back in his chair, tapping the arm with one finger. His voice was level.

"Ms. Harrington. From this moment on, I'm the one standing behind you."

It took me a long time to find my voice. "Mr. Blackwood. Why would you do this for me?"

Something very small and warm moved through his eyes. He leaned forward an inch.

"Clara. You really don't remember me?"

I shook my head, blank.

"Columbia Law, the intercollegiate moot competition," he said patiently. "You were first chair for the affirmative. I was third chair for the opposition. You tore me apart and took the win by half a point."

A locked door opened somewhere in my memory.

I stared at him, and this time I could see, under the expensive suit and the severity, the boy who'd shaken my hand at the podium and said well argued.

"It's you," I said.

I looked up, and we smiled at each other for the first time in seven years.

Julian was in his office, a cigarette burning down between his fingers, watching the livestream of Clara on the roof.

She was going to jump.

He messaged her.

Got brave, did we? Using suicide as a threat now?

Haven't learned your lesson yet?

No reply. None.

The restlessness under his skin got worse. He was reaching to put the phone down when his feed pushed another notification. Something about Clara.

He opened it.

Pages of filth. Deepfakes. Screenshots spreading screenshots.

His fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic creaked.

"How did it get this bad?"

He had thought it was going to be a little online scolding. Make her eat a little humble pie. Remind her who had the leverage.

Not this.

Something sharp and unfamiliar pushed up under his ribs.

Had he gone too far?

This was Clara.

The girl who had split a bagel with him in Bushwick and still laughed about it. The girl who had chosen him — him, with nothing to his name — over every Wall Street heir at Columbia. The girl who wore a two-dollar drugstore ring for seven years and defended it to her millions of subscribers.

How did he end up here?

The door opened. Vivienne slid in, all smiles, and draped her arms around his neck.

"Julian, the baby's two months along now. When are you actually divorcing her? A wedding's not enough, I want to be on the certificate, on the trust, on the will—"

He shoved her off him before she could finish.

Vivienne stumbled backward two steps, her smile fossilizing.

Julian's voice came out cold.

"Who told you I was divorcing her?"

"Clara is my wife. Clara will be my only wife. What makes you think you replace her?"

Vivienne went white. Her voice went high and wounded.

"I'm carrying your child — am I supposed to raise him as a bastard? You can't do this to me—"

There was no softness anywhere in Julian's face.

"Then don't have it. No one's making you."

Vivienne began to sob, the big slow tears that had always worked before. On any other day he would have had her in his arms inside of a minute.

Today he just wanted her out of his sight.

He thought, suddenly: Clara never cried. Not even when she was nineteen and freezing in that basement with blue hands, pressing her hand-warmer into his pocket and grinning. I'm fine. I'm not even cold. Her eyes had always been lit up from the inside.

He thought of chasing her across Morningside Heights — Clara Harrington, the prettiest 1L at Columbia, surrounded by trust-fund boys with Porsches, and she'd picked him.

He thought of the drugstore lipstick he had bought her with tip money his first year. She had worn it every single day. My boyfriend gave me this. It's the best one I own.

When had the light in her eyes gone out?

That unfamiliar pain twisted harder. He had lost something. He didn't know yet what it was.

He didn't get time to think.

His chief of staff burst through the door, white.

"Mr. Sterling. Ms. Harrington has filed. Criminal complaint. Against both of you."