Page 21 of His Verdict

Subject: My phone

Mom, my old phone broke. Totally shattered. I’ll get a new one soon and will send you the number when I do. Love you.

It’s a lie. A necessary one. I cannot talk to her right now. I cannot handle her questions, her well-meaning concern that would feel like sandpaper on my flayed nerves. And I know, with absolute certainty, that if I gave her my new number, it would be in Marcus’s hands within the hour. Even the thought of his name makes my stomach clench.

My new life is one of secrecy and isolation. I have his money in my account, and a new, clean phone in my hand. I should feel a sense of relief, but all I feel is a profound, soul-deep emptiness. I have solved the immediate problems, but the larger one remains: what the fuck am I going to do with my life?

The next few days drift by in a fog of aimless anxiety. The money from the check clears. I pay my rent online. I pay my student loans. I pay my credit cards. I watch the fifty-thousand-dollar mountain dwindle with every transaction. The money buys me time. It buys me survival. But it doesn’t buy me a future.

I haven't heard a word from the State Bar. The investigation is a sword hanging over my head, a silent, looming threat that makes it impossible to plan for anything.

I’m trapped. I can’t work. I can’t leave. All I can do is sit in this apartment and wait for the official notice that my life is over.

I’m careful when I have to go out. I go to grocery stores in neighborhoods far from my own, places where I’m just another anonymous face in the crowd. It’s a strange feeling. Now, I am just… a woman in a hoodie buying milk. The anonymity is a relief, but it’s also an erasure. It feels like I’m disappearing.

And through it all, there is him. A constant, low-grade infection in my thoughts. I try not to think about that night in his penthouse, but the memories are invasive. They ambush me at random moments. The rough texture of his jaw against my cheek. The weight of his body on mine. The sound of his voice, ordering me to fall apart.

I find myself showering two, sometimes three times a day.

It started the day I got back from his place. I stood under the spray for nearly an hour, the water as hot as I could stand it, scrubbing my skin with a loofah until it was red and raw. I was trying to wash him off me. His touch, his scent, the taste of him. But it was more than that. I was trying to scrub away my own body’s betrayal. I was trying to punish my skin for the goosebumps it raised when he touched me, for the way I melted, for the screams of pleasure he ripped from my throat.

Now, the feeling has returned, but it’s different. It’s not about his physical touch anymore. It’s about the money. A different kind of violation. A different kind of dirty. Having his money in my bank account, using it to pay my bills, feels like a stain that has soaked through my skin and into my soul. So I shower, again and again, chasing a clean feeling that never comes.

Tonight, it’s particularly bad. I’m thinking about the dwindling balance in my account, about the fact that I’m now financially dependent on the man who orchestrated my ruin. The bastard. The thought makes my skin crawl.

I strip off my clothes and step into the shower, turning the handle until the water is steaming. The heat is a punishment. I grab the soap and begin to scrub, my motions methodical, repetitive. I scrub my arms, my legs, my stomach. I am not washing. I am trying to erase. To scour away the last few weeks, to get back to the woman I was before I ever heard the name Jasper Wolfe.

I close my eyes, letting the water beat down on my face. The sound of the shower fills the small bathroom, a wall of white noise that almost—almost—drowns out the thoughts in my head.

That’s why, at first, I think I’m imagining it.

A sound. From the other room. A noise that cuts through the hiss of the water.

Thump. Thump-thump.

I turn off the water. The sudden silence is shocking, absolute. I stand there, dripping, my heart instantly kicking into a frantic rhythm. I listen, every nerve ending on high alert.

THUMP. THUMP-THUMP.

It’s coming from my front door.

My apartment is on the third floor of a walk-up. There’s no doorman. No buzzer. For someone to be at my door, they had to get into the building. How?

A cold dread, familiar and specific, washes over me. I know. I know who it is before he even speaks. The arrogance of the knock is a signature.

I stand frozen in the bathroom, water trickling down my body onto the bathmat. My towel is just out of reach. My clothes are in a heap in the bedroom. I am naked, wet, and trapped.

Then his voice comes through the door. It’s not loud, but it cuts through the wood, through the air, and straight into my bones. It’s the same calm, controlled tone he always uses. The voice of a man who never has to raise his.

“Olivia.”

He says my name. A simple statement of fact.

“Open the door. We need to talk about my offer.”

Chapter 10

His voice through the door is a lit match dropped into a pool of gasoline. It ignites every nerve ending in my body.