Page 187 of The Rules

The judge granted the motion. But narrowly. Conditions attached. Scope limited. A leash on their case.

It wasn’t victory. But it wasn’t defeat either.

It was permission to fight.

Ben stood perfectly still, shoulders squared, eyes fixed forward. There was no relief. No reaction.

He didn’t look at her. Or Crawford. Or anyone.

Just the path ahead.

Just the next strike.

Katherine gathered her notes with precise, practiced movements—hands steady, though her pulse still beat against her ribs like a warning drum. As she turned toward the exit, instinct tugged at her spine, and she glanced back—just once.

Ben hadn't moved.

But everything about him spoke.

The set of his jaw, locked tight like he was holding back the weight of what he truly wanted to say. The white press of his knuckles against the table's edge. And his silence—not blank or idle, but taut, thrumming with tension. It wasn’t calm. It wasn’t surrender.

It was a storm waiting for a target.

She recognized that kind of stillness—the quiet that comes just before something breaks. Not the eye of peace, but the coil of pressure waiting for its moment to strike.

And beneath the courthouse’s polished floors and civil tones, one truth had never been clearer:

Ben Sinclair didn’t come to argue a case.

He came to burn something down.

???

Katherine stepped outside, the courthouse doors swinging shut behind them with a final, echoing thud. The sky abovestretched heavy and low, dusk bleeding across it like bruised silk. The city felt distant, muffled. Uninterested in their small war.

The tension between them didn’t dissipate with the fresh air.

It sharpened.

Ben walked ahead without a word, each step measured, his silence loud enough to rattle her bones. She followed, arms wrapping tightly around herself as the wind slid under her blazer and kissed her skin with a chill she barely noticed.

“That could’ve gone worse,” she offered quietly, trying to slice through the quiet with a flicker of levity.

Ben didn’t look at her. Didn’t answer.

His gaze stayed fixed somewhere beyond the skyline, like he wasn’t walking through the parking lot but through some darker possibility only he could see.

Katherine said nothing more as they approached his car.

He unlocked it with a soft click, and she slipped into the passenger seat, her hands tightening in her lap. Ben got in beside her, still wordless, shutting the door with a quiet finality that made the enclosed space feel smaller than it was.

He sat for a moment.

Still.

Then reached forward—opened the center console—and pulled something out.

It was small.