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He stops in the doorway, turns. The corner of his mouth tilts ever so slightly. He answers me with quiet, unbearable certainty.

“I drove all the way here because I wanted to see you, my gorgeous, vicious love.”

My heart drops. Evan smirks, slow and wicked, and then he turns and leaves, closing the door behind him with a soft, final click.

40

Lady Justice

Sophie

Be mine, and I’llbe yours.

Equal investment, equal risk, equal pain and equal pleasure.

Evan’s voice, calm and low, replays in my head like a song stuck on repeat, looping maddeningly, invading my mind when it should be clear and focused.

Really, I should have told him to fuck off. Or laughed in his face. Or maybe I should’ve kissed him anyway, dragged him into my bed, made him lose control—I know I could’ve, if I wanted.

Couldn’t I? I swallow against the knot in my throat. This isn’t the time for this. This isreallynot the time for this.

I catch a deep breath and hold it in my chest, steeling myself as I glance down at my notes, flipping through my notes even though I already know every word, every argument, every statistic I’ve spent weeks tattooing into my brain.Focus, Sophie Sutton, I command myself coldly.You have a job to do.

Laying my notes down on the lectern of old polished wood, I finally look up.

The lecture hall is packed. Mr Park and Mr Callahan warned me it would be, but I still wasn’t expectingthis.

Students crammed into seats, some even perched on the steps, murmuring amongst themselves as they wait for the presentation to begin, laptops and notebooks ready.

I spot a few familiar faces in the crowd: Mr Park, of course, sitting along a row of professors and lecturers. A few people from HLR, whispering amongst themselves. Alice, lounging back in her chair between two of her friends, looking especially studious with her reading glasses and her black hair pinned back.

And, sitting at the very back of the room despite spending the last month loudly discussing skipping this presentation because it’d be far too boring for them—Dahlia and Max.

Dahlia’s eyes are cast down, fingers picking at some invisible flaw on the edge of her skirt. Max, on the other hand, looks well at ease, one leg lazily sprawled out, one arm thrown over the back of his chair.

His eyes are fixed on me.

I allow myself a small, private smile.

Good. Watch me.

Watch this.

“NDAs,” I begin, voiceclear and crisp, cutting right through the hall, “non-disclosure agreements. Originally designed to protect businesses and intellectual property, but today? A legal gag. A tool. A way for the powerful to silence their victims.”

I pause. A few murmurs ripple through the room. Dahlia’s head lifts. Max’s eyes fix on mine. I turn the page in my notes.

“Let’s talk about what that actuallylooks like.”

Click. A case study appears on the screen behind me, the highlighted name of a well-known music producer dominating the text.

The air in the room tightens almost imperceptibly, a silent ripple. I picked my case studies specifically, strategically: this one, because it’s ongoing and firmly in the public eye.

I detail my case study step by step, picking away at the illusion of justice surrounding it, laying out case laws, landmark rulings, statistics and the real-life stories those statistics brush over. I describe in stark, unemotional details the rooms where lawyers sat across from victims, dangling hush money over their heads, pitching payments as apologies rather than bribes. I break down the language of these agreements, the way legal jargon itself is a clever tool used to shift power away from the people who need it most.

Click.

A new slide. A new name.