Chapter 2
The weight of the ring crushes my bones, almost enough to leave permanent wreckage behind. I stare at it, wondering how I let it go this far.
When did it become like this?
When did I stop loving myself?
Did I ever?
The blurry bar, the burning in my lungs, and the pounding in my head are clear signs I should quit now, take an Uber, and go home.
Last night, I did something stupid. Something I’ve wished I had the nerve to do for years.
But like a coward, I didn’t. I just stood there, staring at the stone above the wet dirt, the rain like heavy shards of ice piercing my skin.
Time won’t heal this wound, and neither will the desperate pleas I scream into the void to diffuse the pain.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
It’s like the moment the cool steel even slightly grazes my wrist, I black out, the cloud of grief suffocating me in its hold.
I came close last night, and that scares me to my core.
My phone lights up on the worn-out bar, and I watch it ring, his name blaring in bold black letters, the image of a once-happy couple staring back at me. Gulping down the last bit of my drink, I revel in the beautiful burn in my throat. It’s the most I feel these days.
The screen goes black, then lights up again with a message.
Adrian
Where the fuck are you?
I motion to the handsome bartender again for another drink, and he leans over the wood, his gorgeous skin smooth beneath his black shirt.
I’ve known Ambrose since we were little.
My father loved this pub before he became a judge, and Ambrose’s father left it to him after he passed.
It’s changed since then, from a dank old bar to a swanky new and upscale place to hang out, drink, or enjoy sports on the multiple television screens adorning almost every wall.
“Isla, I can’t serve you another.” Ambrose tries to sound like he means it, but we both know I’ll get my way in the end.
I catch his baby blue eyes with mine. “Pour me another one and I promise I won’t be back for a month.” I lie through my teeth.
My phone lights up again, and we both watch it ring before turning to each other. He raises his brows and shakes his head as he reaches behind him to grab my favourite liquor.
“Hard day?” He tries to make conversation, but I want none of that. I just want to be in silence with myself.
My pathetic, stupid self.
“Worse than you think. I dropped a jam doughnut,” I answer him with sarcasm.
He smiles, hands over the shot of gin, and I down it. Pulling out a hundred-pound note, I slide it over to him, then shove my phone in my bag without another glance.
“I hope you’re not driving. Wait, let me call you a taxi.” He pulls his phone from his pocket, but I raise a hand to stop him. I don’t want to sit in a taxi for two minutes when I can walk it off before I get home.
“That’s not necessary. I’m just going to walk tonight. I need it.”
He hesitates, looking out into the dark night.
“I don’t think—”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve done the walk many times.” Grabbing my coat from the back of the bar seat, I stand without giving him another chance to speak.
The cool night air raises the hairs on my arms when I step out, and I immediately throw on my coat.
The alcohol warms me from within, the numbing effect a bonus, considering I can hardly feel the hard leather of my heels digging into the tops of my feet.
The streets are dark, as they always are this time of night, but I’m not far from home.
It might take me a little longer than ten minutes to get there because of my stilettos, but I’ve done it before.
I groan at the incessant vibrations coming from my bag.
It’s making me want to throw the thing in the bin I pass.
Instead, I focus on my steps, willing my ankles not to fail me as my heels clack on the pavement beneath.
Wrapping my coat around myself, I round the corner and spot the bright red Corvette that’s always parked right at the top of the street near mine.
I’ve always wondered if the owners ever drive it because it’s sat there day after day in the same spot.
Things didn’t always used to be like this.
I used to be fun, but now I’m a lonely, tired, engaged drunkard.
It was mainly on special occasions that I indulged, for birthdays and anniversaries, but in recent months, I’ve been leaning on it a bit too much.
It started as something to help me relax after a long day of working at the office, then it morphed into a need to escape.
Now, it’s so I don’t remember the utterly horrible person I am.
A defence attorney who represents criminals.
I went into this thinking I would help the innocent. I distinctly remember making a vow to myself that I wouldn’t take on anyone who had taken a life.
But that was a long time ago.
Money isn’t the reason I do this job. If that were it, I’d represent all the gangsters and criminals I could find.
Somewhere along the line, it changed for me, but I can’t pinpoint when or why.
Something still calls to me, to pursue this career, to let everyone know I’m not a screw up, like a desperate plea for everyone to see me how I want to see myself.
Then maybe, just maybe, even a small amount of their belief will be my belief.
The liquor in my stomach swirls as I make it halfway up the hill, and I consider taking my shoes off but decide against it. He’s probably wondering where I am and where I’ve been the entire night after I left work.
I wish I cared.
I wish I had the smallest spark in me to continue the charade I’ve been keeping up, but I don’t have the energy to pretend anymore.
A few minutes pass as I work my way up my street.
The lights are on downstairs, and when I walk through the door, I wait for the onslaught of questions.
When they don’t come, I breathe a sigh of relief, which doesn’t last long.
Footsteps echo on the tiled floor, and I squeeze my eyes shut as his deep voice breaks the empty silence, the relief morphing into dread.
“Where the hell were you!?” His voice is hard and filled with fury.
“Out.” I keep my tone flat, dropping my bag to the floor and hanging my coat on the rack beside the front door.
“Don’t you think you should message me to tell me that?”
I roll my eyes, wishing he’d just stop with the useless, overbearing act.
“I think we’re past that, don’t you?”
My heels clack on the tiles as I make my way through the hallway and into the open-plan living area.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that? A pain in my fucking backside.
” His green eyes zero in on mine, and I wish I felt something, but all his gaze does is make me sick.
“You’re so irresponsible. You don’t care about anyone but yourself anymore.
All you do is work, come home, eat, and do it all again the next day.
You don’t even look at me like you used to. ”
He thinks his words are getting through to me, making me feel something that was there for him years ago, but the ice just grows thicker beneath my chest the more he tries to gaslight me.
“Do you know how it makes me feel when all you do is shut me out? You hardly even speak to me anymore, Isla.”
I let out an exasperated sigh and take my hair out of the ponytail I’ve had it in all day. “I’m tired, Adrian. Maybe we can talk about our feelings tomorrow.”
He stands there, bewildered, as I give him nothing.
“Unbelievable.” Crossing his arms, he rounds the island in the middle of the kitchen and steps closer to me.
I did once consider him to be attractive.
The short dark hair, green eyes, and perfectly tailored suit used to do it for me.
Now, all it does is remind me that even though we work in the same profession, we couldn’t be more opposite.
We have history, sure. We’ve been through law school together, broken up, and gotten back together way too many times to count.
We shared a similar interest in the law, but that history doesn’t seem so important anymore… not when I don’t smile anymore.
Not when I drink myself into stupid situations.
And certainly not when I haven’t been touched in the way that turns my body into an inferno.
“I don’t want to lose you.” He places his perfectly manicured hand on mine. I tear my eyes away and slide my hand out of his.
“It’s late and I have an early start tomorrow.”
He nods, not wanting to push me further. “Are you going to take that case? You know your father won’t approve.”
Oh, I know. Judge Gordon Knight doesn’t approve of anything I do.
“I haven’t met with the client yet.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t take this one. He’s clearly linked with that dirty crime family.
” He loosens his tie, and I catch sight of bright red stains on the collar of his shirt.
There should be a sting, a pull…or something that happens when you know your fiancé is cheating on you, but I feel nothing. “Judge Gordon will flip his lid.”
I smile, knowing that’s exactly why I want to take the case. “My father’s rulings are limited to his courtroom, Adrian. They have no place in my life.”
As a young girl, I always wondered which path I’d take. As did others, I’m sure. Growing up, my father’s presence was like a weighted blanket.
Suffocating.
He’s always been a man of extremes. At home, his study was like his sanctuary, and god forbid we ever walked in to interrupt him when he was deep into his work.
I understand why Mum divorced him years ago…
may she rest in peace. I get why she didn’t want to spend her nights alone as he worked feverishly on cases into the early hours of the morning.
I remember watching him from the doorway one evening, the soft glow of his lamp casting a shadow over his face.
He looked at peace. It was as if he wasn’t working, but doing something others would consider enjoyment, like golf or gardening.
My hand slipped on the book I was carrying and made a thud on the wooden floors. I’m sure he heard me because the thud was loud and echoed through the empty hall. And yet, he didn’t look up from his work. He never noticed me or paid any attention to me unless it would benefit him in some way.
But in the courtroom, he was like a god.
Judge Gordon Knight. His name alone would strike fear into those who faced him. He was known for his unwavering commitment to the law and the justice system.
I hated him for it.
He seemed like a stranger who commanded obedience and lived by the rules without ever questioning them. Like a damn soldier.
He saw me as nothing more than a little girl.
The messed-up part was that I spent so much of my life trying to prove to him that I was more than our last name, that I was more than just his legacy, but it didn’t matter to him.
No matter what I did, or how hard I tried to gain his attention for more than a second, I could feel his judgement and disapproval if I did anything slightly off course.
But now, as I sit here in my office, my fingers tracing the edge of the folder, I’m on the verge of possibly losing all of his respect. It wasn’t enough that I became a defence attorney, no. I wanted to shove it in his face that I didn’t follow his path to defend the innocent.
I’m not stupid. I know for a fact that eighty per cent of my clients are guilty, but watching his face after he hears about the cases I’ve won is beyond any recognition he could ever give me. I want him to hate me just as much as I hate him.
Or maybe I just want him to see me for who I am. Strong, independent, and intelligent like him.
The moment it changed for me was when I watched the justice system bend. That’s when the fascination began, of knowing exactly how far I could push the boundaries. In my line of work, others would prefer to see my clients behind bars.
Including my father.
But it’s my job to keep them out.
If you know what you’re doing and you know your way around the law, you might just end up being a very rich woman in a field still heavily dominated by men.
Malik Faris isn’t exactly the first criminal I’ve represented.
Everyone else would avoid representing someone like him.
The word on the streets is that he’s a dangerous man.
Ruthless, capable of terrible things that you would only see in documentaries, the right hand of the most notorious crime family in London.
I’m not afraid of him.
He intrigues me. He’s the exact type of person Judge Gordon Knight would have condemned to Hell or the worst parts of prison.
The pads of my fingers trace the raised skin on the back of my neck, and that feeling is back. When I said yes to marrying Adrian, I thought I wanted it. As the days pass and the wedding date inches closer, the dark swirling wormhole inside me breeds, growing larger the more I ignore it.
You don’t belong in this world.
It’s the most common remark I hear from people. Being a woman practising in this particular field of law, and because I was young when I started, confuses people. Although I’m fairly well off, I wouldn’t be here without my father, and he knows that too.
I look down at the file again, my client’s name in large bold letters.
I know my hands won’t remain clean in this. Hell, they’ve barely been clean since I started taking on clients like him, but I’m ready for this case to be the final straw. I want to watch his power over me diminish the more cases I win. I want to see it in his eyes.
The Knight empire will no longer be about the pristine legacy he wants to leave behind, but my mark on it.
I’m not the type to let my head get the better of me.
Being in this industry, you need to have thick skin and the confidence of a lion to get the job done.
You need to be able to separate emotion from logic and build a case, no matter how vile the crime is.
And that’s exactly what I do for every case I take on.
Remain impartial.
A rap on my door pulls me from my thoughts, and as soon as he walks in, I lose myself momentarily in the darkness of his honey-brown eyes, like their own worlds with orbiting moons made of burning coal.
He stands there, towering over the space.
His immaculate posture is unnerving as he extends his hand with a calmness that unsettles me.
When our eyes lock, I can tell he knows he wasn’t what I expected.
“Miss Knight.” His voice is smooth, like warm melted butter on toast, and something about it makes me hesitate before my hand clasps around his. “I’m Malik Faris.”