I woke up the next morning, sun streaming through my windows. The office coffeemaker had clicked on automatically, brewing the first pot of the morning. It was six thirty. I freshened up in my private powder room, trying to make it seem like I hadn’t spent the night crying in my office.
Lincoln zipped through my thoughts. I blocked him out. I imagined building a wall between us, separating us brick by brick. I’d already done it in real life; adding one in my imagination couldn’t fuck things up any worse. I had to erase him from my mind as best I could. Otherwise, I would never be able to function. I’d caused him pain he didn’t deserve. Used his secrets against him, betrayed him to save myself.
I had reasons, I reminded myself. Big reasons. Death. Dismemberment.
Besides, it was done. It could never be undone. I served myself a cup of coffee, black and bitter, and started my day.
Castille’s case took up the lion’s share of our time for the next two weeks. We tracked down witnesses, arranged experts, and drafted preliminary motions. Wash proved invaluable for finding information in New Orleans. After he’d made his dramatic appearance, I’d sent him back south to be boots on the ground. In reality, he’d served his purpose for the time being. I’d bring him back out for trial, parade him around in front of Lincoln like a garish show pony.
Wash had agreed to serving as co-counsel for me, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it the way I’d suspected he would. He never discussed Lincoln at all. I got the feeling that he’d thought the whole thing would be more gratifying than it actually was. Maybe time did heal the wound, after all? If it did, I went in with a jagged knife and did my best to open it right back up again by adding Wash to the case. Pallida & Associates, turning brother against brother in the name of survival—maybe I could get some new pens with that slogan.
Vinnie and I worked long days and nights. The other associates scurried away from me in fear, practically running for cover whenever they saw me coming down the hall. Word was that I’d somehow gotten worse. Whispers in the break room and frightened glances never bothered me. After all, I was the bad bitch. I had no time or inclination to try to be anything different. I’d destroyed any chance my associates had of getting out from under my iron fist when I first dialed Washington’s number. So, as far as I was concerned, they could continue to scurry and plot about how to avoid my ire. Be a-fucking-fraid.
As the case wore on, we had a smattering of hearings over small things, like exhibit lists and witness orders. I didn’t file anything that would hold up progress.
I got sick before every hearing. My lunch was never safe when I knew that afternoon held a run-in with Lincoln. I wasn’t scared, and I certainly didn’t fear him; it was something else. Shame, maybe? Shame that when he saw me now, he really saw me—all the ugliness and pettiness that had been hidden by my manipulation now out on display.
Every time I caught a glimpse of him, it was like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. The wind went out of me, and I couldn’t focus for a moment. Then I would fight the feeling away and pretend like everything was fine.
The tables had turned. Lincoln never met my eye. It was as if I no longer existed to him, as if I were beneath his notice, not good enough. Some of that may have been projecting, but the fact remained that he couldn’t stand to look at me. I couldn’t blame him for it. I deserved his censure or worse.
When the hearings were over, he would walk out, never looking back. I would let him go. I had to. There was nothing I could say, nothing I would say. I made my choice. Wrongly or rightly, my path was laid out ahead of me, leading ever onward, though definitely not upward.
After long nights at the office, I would get takeout and go home, tired, beaten, and solitary. I would drink lonely, not alone. I never set foot in the Docket Call. I missed Jonesy and Wood, but I didn’t have the balls to set foot on their turf. I wondered if Lincoln talked about me to them now, wondered if they shared tales about how the bad bitch burned them every chance she got. How she couldn’t be trusted, no matter what she did or said. How every word out of her mouth was a lie.
The trial date moved ever closer, 120 days gone in a flash. The week before jury selection was to begin, we argued our evidentiary motions. Wash was back in town, though his job was to sit at the counsel table and look pretty more than anything else.
“Ms. Pallida, what motions do you have for the Government?”
I strode up to the podium in the center of the well. Lincoln took his now-customary place against the jury box, arms crossed over his chest. I meant to glance and look away, but something on his face caught my eye—a neat row of small bandages running along his nose. I stared harder, noticing the shadow along his jaw and the dark discoloration under his left eye. He’d been fighting. I had driven him back to the darkest time in his life and left him there. I swallowed my self-loathing. There was no turning back now. Not anymore.