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“I know,” Jace said louder. He shook his head. “Fuck, I know, but the partners are insisting it be you. Claremore’s insisting. We don’t have a choice either way. Besides that, they’re talking junior partner for you sooner than later if we win this one.”

“Look, Jace, I know this is my job, but I can’t get up there and hide the fact that I…”

Quietly, Jace said, “You don’t have to say it. I know. You think he’s an asshole and he’s guilty. I do too. But this is our job. I’ll help you get through it, I promise.”

They were subdued as each of them mulled over the implications of imminent failure for Vanessa professionally, or conversely, what it would mean for the residents of that neighborhood and others like it if Claremore was acquitted.

Jace broke the silence. “Do you ever…?”

Vanessa looked at him. “Do I ever what?”

“When you were in law school, is this what you saw yourself doing? I know that as defense attorneys, we accept the fact that some of the people we defend will be guilty as charged. Things happen in life. Crimes of passion or opportunity. I mean, one of the reasons I stay single is because I know some woman out there will probably end up wanting to kill my ass at some point.”

“You mean that hasn’t already happened?” Sandy asked sarcastically.

“It has, actually. But defending people who could do things like this? Is this our legacy? Don’t give me that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ shit. Answer me honestly.” Jace’s stare was searching.

“I wanted to do criminal law. Not exactly helping someone like this . Personally, I feel sick every time I’m in a room with him.” Sandy nodded; Vanessa already knew she felt the same.

Understatement. The way his eyes followed her and Sandy’s asses for the entirety of this trial whenever they were around him made her skin fucking crawl.

Almost worse than that was the way Claremore condescended to her like she was ignorant.

He was sorely testing her resolve not to curse him the fuck out.

She gritted her teeth and continued. “Regardless of how I feel about him, he’s entitled to fair and zealous representation just like everybody else.”

She liked Jace and Sandy a lot, but she’d never crossed her own boundary when it came to sharing her feelings about the clients or her personal life, even when they shared theirs. But today, for some reason, the story started tumbling out.

“Okay, you want the real answer and not the one that’s made for TV?

When I was fourteen and my younger brother Bobby was ten, he was at a corner store buying candy.

The police were looking for a guy in his late twenties who’d stabbed somebody, and they snatched my brother and put him in a lineup with these teenagers.

My brother was average height for a ten-year-old and dark-skinned.

Somehow, even though the guy that actually did it was tall, thirty-five, and light-skinned, they claimed Bobby ‘fit the description.’”

Jace winced. Sandy’s face twisted with sympathetic anger. But neither said a word, just let her speak.

“They didn’t let him call my mom or anyone else, just took him and held him at the local precinct for hours.

My mother was frantic. We ran up and down our neighborhood searching for him.

Finally, we heard what happened from one of the other parents.

We went down to the precinct, and she raised hell till they released him. ”

Thinking back to her mother Nadine’s face, the absolute fear, then the relief, then the rage, directed at the cops and then at her, Vanessa’s insides twisted.

“ You were supposed to be watching him! Where were you? ”

Twenty-one years had passed, and the words still echoed in her head as if she’d first heard and felt them yesterday.

“The public defender hadn’t even sent anyone, even though the police had told them Bobby was there.

So, I made it my goal. Become a public defender or at least open my own practice to defend vulnerable people who were wrongfully accused for the wrong reasons.

I just…never quite made it there. After this case, I almost feel like asking Patel if I can sign up. ”

What she hadn’t mentioned was that her original desire had been to become an English professor.

It was her mother Nadine’s pressure that had been the final factor in her deciding to go to law school instead.

Then when Vanessa had finally agreed to pursue law, it was Nadine who’d discouraged her from working for the public.

It had been the prestige, the cachet of saying her daughter was a lawyer at a Tier 1 firm in New York’s second wealthiest county.

It was, in a very real way to Nadine, a measure of her own success as a mother who’d raised two children alone on a nurse’s income after her husband’s death.

And like a true praise-whore, Vanessa loved giving Nadine a reason to brag.

Her daughter, the attorney. Her daughter, who made her opponents sweat in the courtroom.

Her daughter, who, any day now, would own this place.

The only person who earned as much praise, or more…

well, significantly more, was her son Robert, who’d risen way above their humble beginnings to become a doctor.

Not just any old doctor, a cardiothoracic surgeon.

No, she could never up and quit a gig like this. She’d have to fake it till she made it.

“What they did to your brother fucking sucked, Watson,” Jace said with a head shake.

“And I hear you about wanting to work for the public, but let’s face it, the money here is real green.

No shame in that. It was the same for me.

I couldn’t fathom paying back those school loans on city employee money and still managing to eat more than ramen for thirty years.

Someday, I would like to open up my own firm.

How about you, Sand? Do you really want to do corporate for your parents? ”

Sandy, who usually didn’t speak up much, had a lot to say.

“I would have wanted to do legal services for a community-based non-profit. But, Mom and Dad paid that tuition in return for the promise of my perpetual servitude to the company so, unless I want to hand over my firstborn instead, I’ve gotta deliver on my end.

” She finished a chicken tender and grinned.

“Anyway, let’s talk about something non-law related, please.

Thanks for treating us to lunch again, Jace. ”

He laughed, showing his mega-watt golden boy smile. “Didn’t you say something about your parents footing the bills?” which earned him a balled-up napkin aimed at his face.