Chapter 1 MR. ALEXANDER STERLING

LILA

You are confident. You are capable. You graduated top of your class at Harwick Law. You belong here.

The affirmations sounded convincing in my bathroom at 6:15 this morning, with my hair still damp and my reflection staring back at me with something that resembled determination. Now, standing at the base of the Clevestone & Reeves building, the words feel thin. Tissue-paper thin.

I press my palm flat against my stomach, smooth the front of my blazer, and walk through the revolving door.

The lobby is exactly what you'd expect from one of the city's oldest and most prestigious law firms. Marble floors the colour of cream with grey veins running through them. Ceilings that climb high enough to make you feel appropriately small. A reception desk that gleams like an altar, staffed by a woman with a sleek dark bun and a smile that manages to be both welcoming and evaluating at exactly the same time.

"Lila Alvarez," I say, approaching her. "I'm a new trainee associate. Starting today."

"Of course." She types something, nods, prints a badge without looking away from her screen. "You'll be on the thirty-first floor. Mr. Prescott is your supervising partner. He's expecting you at nine sharp." She glances at the clock behind me, and her smile tightens. "It's eight fifty-three."

I take the badge, clip it on, and move toward the elevators.

Eight fifty-three. Seven minutes. Fine. I am fine.

The elevator doors open on the thirty-first floor and immediately deposit me into a controlled kind of chaos. Junior associates move with documents tucked under their arms, phones pressed to their ears. A paralegal is almost jogging, her heels a rapid percussion against the hardwood. Somewhere, a printer is vibrating loudly.

I stand just outside the elevator for a moment, taking it in, and that is when I see him.

Ezra.

He is standing near the glass partition of an office, talking to another associate, a tall lady with thick, dark glasses, and laughing at something. He wears a charcoal suit I haven't seen before. It fits him well. He looks good, and the sight of him loosens something in my chest.

“Ezra!” I squeal a bit too excitedly.

I immediately stop myself, remembering the lecture he gave me the other day about professionalism when I told him I had gotten an offer.

He looks up at the sound of my voice and catches my eye a second later.

The smile doesn't disappear, exactly. It just... changes subtly, almost as though he is trying to prevent himself from outrightly frowning. He excuses himself from the other associate and crosses toward me with measured, professional steps.

"Alvarez," he says.

I blink. "Sorry?"

"That's how it'll work here. Last names, or Ms. Alvarez if a partner is present." He stops in front of me, and his voice is quiet, professional. "I know we talked about this, Lila, but I want to make sure we're on the same page now that you're actually here. In the office, we're colleagues. Nothing more."

I stare at him. "I know that, Ezra. I'm not going to call you babe in a client meeting."

"I'm not saying you would. I'm saying the lines need to be clear, and this little display of yours, is unacceptable in the workplace."

I sigh. “I know. I’m sorry, I was just excited to see you. Surely, you can’t be that mad at me for being happy to see my boyfriend, Ezra.”

“It’s Mr. Combe to you, Alvarez,” He all but hisses. “Listen, you won't get any accommodations from me because of our relationship. If anything, I'll hold you to a higher standard, because anything else would look like favouritism and reflect poorly on both of us. You understand that, right?"

The words are reasonable. Professionally, structurally, entirely reasonable. And yet there’s something about the way he delivers them that ticks me off.

"I understand," I say, keeping my voice even. "I didn't come here because of you, Ezra. I came here because I earned it."

Something flickers behind his eyes. Briefly. "I know you did." And then. "Prescott's office is that way. Don't be late."

He walks back to his colleague, and the conversation resumes. I stand there for two full seconds before forcing my feet to move. So much for working together being an avenue for us to bond and become closer to each other.

Mr. Prescott is a compact man in his late fifties with grey hair, a suit that probably costs more than my first month's salary, and with a perpetually unimpressed expression.

"Alvarez. Sit."

I sit.

"Welcome to this prestigious firm. You were selected amongst a very competitive group of candidates, so I have to congratulate you for that. However, you'll find Clevestone & Reeves operates differently from whatever academic environment you're accustomed to. Speed matters here. Precision matters. Discretion matters above all else. I’m sure you were informed that during your orientation."

I nod.

He folds his hands on the desk. "You are going to begin by acting in a supportive capacity our Corporate and Commercial department, under the Equity, Finance and Private Wealth management team for your first rotation. You will not speak in client meetings unless directly addressed. You will not offer opinions unless asked. You will not make mistakes, and if you do, you will fix them quietly and quickly and they will not happen again. Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He slides a thin folder across the desk. "There is a client meeting in the main conference room at ten o'clock. Sterling, Beaumont and a handful of others will be present. Your task is simple, assist in setting up, ensure the coffee service is managed properly during the meeting, and take accurate minutes. The minutes will be reviewed by end of day." He looks at me over his reading glasses. "It is not glamorous work, Ms. Alvarez. But it is important work, and how you handle the unglamorous tells me considerably more about you than anything on your CV."

"Understood."

He dismisses me with a glance back at his papers.

I stand, collect the folder, and walk out.

Coffee and minutes. Seven years of education, undergraduate, law school, internships, moot competitions, a dissertation that my professor has called genuinely exceptional, and my first act at Clevestone & Reeves will be pouring coffee.

I tell myself it doesn't sting.

It does, a little.

But Prescott isn't wrong, either, and I know that. I've heard enough from Ezra, back when he used to actually talk to me about his work, about how the trainees who last are the ones who don't think any task is beneath them. So I read the folder, familiarise myself with the names, confirm the setup with the assistant outside the conference room, and by nine forty-five, I am arranging cups and checking that the coffee is at the right temperature.

The conference room is on the thirty-third floor, and it is perfect, clearly designed to impress. A long oval table of dark polished wood runs the length of the room, surrounded by high-backed leather chairs. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the city. A sideboard along the far wall holds the refreshment setup: a carafe of coffee, a second of water, small pitchers of cream, a neat arrangement of cups.

I position myself near the sideboard and open my notebook.

People begin filing in at one minute to ten.

I recognise a few of them from the dossier, a Mr. Beaumont, senior partner; a woman I identify as Harriet Cho, one of the firm's rising litigators; the client, a Mr. Whitfield, flanked by two staff. They take their seats.

I begin moving along the table, pouring coffee, quiet and efficient, my notepad tucked under my arm and my pen already uncapped.

Three cups poured. Four. I move around the curve of the table, and the door at the far end of the conference room opens.

I don't look up immediately. I am focused on the cup in front of me, on the angle of the pour, on not sloshing. And then the room changes, or rather, the air inside it changes, in a way I can't immediately explain.

I look up.

He walks in like the room has been waiting for him. He is tall, with dark hair that is slightly longer than corporate convention typically allows, brushed back from a face that is all clean angles and careful composure. He wears a dark suit. He is speaking quietly to someone just behind him, his head slightly turned, and there is a quality to his presence that I don't have words for yet.

Every person at the table straightens. Even Beaumont, who has thirty years on the man and has presumably attended thousands of these meetings.

Alexander Sterling. Head partner. The firm's name might say Clevestone & Reeves, but everyone in the building knows whose house this is.

He moves along the far side of the table, and that is when he looks up from his conversation, and across the length of the conference room, his eyes meet mine.

I don't know how to explain what happens next in a way that doesn't sound like I am having a medical episode.

It is brief, a fraction of a second, maybe less. But in that fraction, something shifts. The sharpness of the room blur slightly at the periphery. And Alexander Sterling... flickers.

That's the only word I have for it. He flickers.

And in that interruption, in that half-blink of a moment, I see something underneath.

Pointed ears, swept back through dark hair that is suddenly much longer, falling to his shoulders. A quality to his skin that isn't quite right for fluorescent office lighting, too warm, too luminous, like something lit from within, bright golden wings stretching behind him. And around him, so faint that I would convince myself I imagined it if it hadn't been so distinct, a gold shimmer that clings to his outline like a second shadow.

Then it is gone.

He looks away toward Beaumont, the room snaps back into perfect sharpness, and Alexander Sterling is simply a very attractive man in a very expensive suit sitting down at the head of a conference table.

My hands are still moving. The muscle memory of the task continues without me, the carafe still tilting, the pour still happening, and it is only when the heat registers against my fingers that I realise.

The cup has overflowed.

Coffee spreads across the table, rolling toward the edge of a document, cream-coloured, dense with text, marked at the top with a red CONFIDENTIAL. I make a sound that is not a word and lunge for the document and succeed only in knocking the carafe slightly, which contributes a second and more generous wave to the catastrophe.

The room goes silent.

"Ms. Alvarez."

Prescott's voice comes from somewhere to my left, and the particular temperature of it, perfectly controlled, which is somehow worse than shouting, makes the back of my neck prickle with heat.

"The Whitfield brief," he says, very carefully, "is not a document designed to function as a sponge."

Someone at the table, one of Whitfield's staff, I think, makes a small sound that might be a suppressed laugh and might be distress. I immediately grab a napkin from the sideboard to blot the document, my face so hot I am fairly certain I am visibly glowing, my mind running a rapid and unhelpful loop of this is fine, this is a disaster, you have ruined your career before it started, this is fine.

"I'm so sorry," I say, to the table, to Prescott, to the ruined document. "I... it was an accident, I'll..."

"You'll step back," Prescott says. "Harriet, could you.." and Harriet Cho is already up, already managing the document. I step back with the ruined cloth in my hand and my notebook somehow still tucked under my arm and my pen somehow still uncapped and pointed at nothing.

I make myself look up, because looking at the floor feels worse somehow, and in doing so I make another mistake.

My eyes go directly to the head of the table and meet another pair of eyes.

Alexander Sterling is watching me.

Not with the embarrassment I might expect from a senior partner witnessing a new trainee implode spectacularly on day one.

He is watching me with an expression I can't read, his head is tilted very slightly to one side, and his eyes, dark, and very still, and sharper than any eyes I have ever encountered across a conference room, hold something that look deeply unsettling.