Chapter 29
Benjamin
The air in the firm was thick—like everyone was holding their breath and pretending not to.
Katherine Winters was gone. And the scent of blood was still fresh.
Whispers snaked through the halls, coiling around Benjamin Sinclair's office like smoke with teeth.
And inside, the man at the center of it all? He was a fucking landmine.
Ben sat at his desk, the weight of the firm pressing down from all sides. Morning light slanted through the blinds, casting prison-bar shadows across the wood. He could feel the stares, the hushed conversations that died the moment he walked past. They were all watching, waiting for him to crack.
He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
A soft knock broke the silence. Patty stood in the doorway, her usual spark dulled, eyes cautious but caring. She hesitated—just a beat—before stepping in.
"Ben..." It wasn’t often she used his first name. Not anymore. Not since they were kids and the world was simpler. Even as cousins, they’d outgrown those familiarities—especially here, where titles and tension ran thicker than blood.
Her voice was gentler than usual, tentative in a way it had never been. "People are talking."
He didn’t respond.
"They're saying she just disappeared. That she didn’t even clear out her desk. That she left because of you."
Still no reaction. Just another page flipped in the file he wasn’t reading, eyes on the words but seeing none of them.
His grip on the page left a faint indent.
Patty didn’t stop.
"I know it’s none of my business, but..." She shifted her weight, stepped closer, as if proximity might cut through the fog clouding the office. "You haven’t been like yourself.
You haven’t even been here.”
The latch clicked softly as Joshua entered behind her, but Patty kept her gaze on her cousin.
"I just want to know if you're okay," she added. And then, more honestly: "Because you don’t seem okay."
Ben exhaled slowly. A low, measured breath that did nothing to ease the pressure in his chest. His hand adjusted his cufflink with mechanical precision. A performance.
"I'm fine."
A lie. Polished and empty.
When his eyes finally met hers, they were hollowed out.
Not cruel. Not cold. Just... gone. Like whatever had burned in him had already turned to ash.
Patty said nothing. She didn’t need to.
Because the lie wasn’t just for her. It was for himself too.
"That’s bullshit."
The words landed like a hammer. Ben didn’t blink. But the air charged—sharp and electric, like the second before lightning strikes.
His gaze rose—slow, precise. A glance honed like a scalpel. Control locked into his spine.
Joshua stood at the threshold, fury crackling off him like static. Patty lingered nearby, caught between instinct and uncertainty. Her eyes flicked between them, mapping exits.
Ben’s tone was flat. "Excuse me?"
Two syllables. Cold. A warning, not a question.
"You heard me," Joshua snapped. "You didn’t just fire her—you humiliated her. You let this place tear her apart, and you didn’t say a goddamn word."
Ben remained still. Coiled. Studying.
His pulse steady, breath controlled. But something darker curled low in his gut. He cataloged every tell—flush rising, twitching fingers.
"You know what they’re saying out there?" Joshua pressed. Bitter. Rapid-fire. "That she fucked her way to the top. That you used her, got bored, and tossed her. And since no one dares to come for you, they rip her to pieces instead."
The words hit. Sharp. Precise. But Ben didn’t flinch. Only a subtle clench in his knuckles betrayed impact.
He reached out—slowly—and closed the folder before him. The soft click rang like a gunshot. His fingertips lingered. Silence stretched.
"She’s the one getting shredded," Joshua continued, louder now. "But it’s your name they’re all afraid to say. So they go for her. Because she’s easier."
Ben rose.
Not in rage.
Not in haste.
Just... stood. Cold. Certain. Like judgment taking form.
He rounded the desk—unhurried, unshakable.
Not approaching. Advancing. Each step a verdict.
"Watch your fucking tone," he murmured, voice low and lethal—quiet as silk, sharp as a blade. "You have no idea what you’re talking about."
Rage simmered beneath his skin. Controlled. Focused. Made dangerous by its silence.
Joshua stiffened. "You don’t get to be the victim here."
"I’m not." Ben moved closer, the shift in gravity palpable. "But don’t mistake loyalty for clarity. You think you’re defending her?" His voice dropped further. Razor-edged. "You’re just flaunting your ignorance."
Joshua’s breath hitched.
Ben’s gaze locked him in place, every inch of him carved from calm fury. "You’re quoting hallway gossip like it’s gospel. Reading a story that was never yours to touch."
Joshua’s mouth flattened, tension pulling sharp across his cheek. "She didn’t deserve this."
"No." The word was soft. Final. Worse than denial.
"But playing white knight won’t make you her hero. You’re just late to the fucking battlefield."
Silence.
Patty held her breath.
Ben’s tone iced over. "Now get the fuck out of my office."
Joshua didn’t flinch. A vein pulsed at his temple.
Ben stepped in—closer, colder. The air between them dropped. Fletcher's cologne, usually clean and crisp, now clung to him like a nervous sweat. Ben felt the tension ticking under his skin, saw it in the way his fingers flexed—barely restrained.
"I won’t say it again."
The words fell heavy.
Joshua’s throat bobbed. No retort. No apology.
But he stepped back. Once. Twice. Then gone.
The door clicked shut.
Ben stood alone.
Spine set. Hands still. Breath thin and sharp.
Only his pulse betrayed him—pounding like a war drum beneath skin.
And the silence that followed didn’t settle him.
It just made the noise inside louder.
◆◆◆
The folder sat where it had for days—untouched, unwanted, like a cursed relic. Ben had told himself it was nothing. Just another mind game from a woman who knew how to get under his skin.
But after Joshua's words, after the way his gut hadn't stopped twisting...
He stared at it from across his desk. The manila folder was innocuous. Plain. The kind that passed through his hands a hundred times a week. And yet, he hadn't been able to bring himself to open it.
"I trust your judgment," she'd said.
He exhaled sharply through his nose. Ridiculous. She'd never trusted him. Not with her identity, not with the fucking truth.
With a single decisive movement, Ben reached for the folder and flipped it open.
The opening pages were cold, clinical: Legal documents. Facts without feeling. Niel Winters. Financial fraud. Conviction. Ben read with detached eyes, mind already halfway out the door. Another sob story. Another desperate attempt to manipulate him.
Until it wasn't.
His fingers stilled on the third page. The movement of his eyes slowed, then stopped completely.
"Samuel Crawford," Ben murmured, the name leaving a bitter taste on his tongue.
He knew Crawford. Everyone in the legal world did. The man was a legend—untouchable, with a spotless conviction record and a Harvard pedigree polished to perfection. He was also Ben's father’s oldest friend. And once, a long time ago, he'd been his mentor.
Back then, he had still believed in justice.
Ben interned under Crawford during his first case—young, eager, and painfully naive. And Crawford had gutted that naivety in a single line: “You’re a good lawyer, Ben. But you need to stop thinking like a hero. Heroes don’t win cases—men like me do.”
It wasn’t just a warning. It was the line that ended whatever trust Ben had left.
From that moment, he saw who Crawford truly was—how he twisted facts, silenced doubt, buried truth like it was strategy. And Ben had let it happen. Watched the verdict fall, sharp and final, and said nothing.
He hadn’t spoken to Crawford since. Not really.
Then he saw the date. Right at the start of everything.
His breath caught.
He turned the page—hands suddenly too slow, too deliberate—and there it was.
The case.
Not by name. Not on paper. But it belonged to him.
The one that had haunted him from the moment he realized the man they'd defended had been innocent. The first case he’d ever been near, the first time he’d sat in the corner of a dark conference room with a borrowed tie, thinking he was learning from the best. Thinking he was lucky to be there.
His name wasn't on the memo—he hadn't earned that yet.
But he remembered the language. The strategy. The cold, clinical tone.
And then: the internal correspondence.
Black and white. Stamped and time-coded. Between Crawford and the financial crimes unit. Dated three weeks before Niel Winters’ arrest.
The language was cautious. Carefully couched. But the message was unmistakable.
They’d picked the target before the investigation began.
Built the case backward. Fabricated the inevitability.
Ben’s blood ran cold.
This wasn’t just familiar. This was a mirror.
The same pattern. The same rot. The same quiet corruption that had taken his first client and torn the man’s life apart while Ben watched, too young and too naive to understand the game he was already inside of.
Except now, he did understand.
And suddenly, it wasn't just about Winters.
It was about him.
He stared at the memo, memories crashing through the carefully constructed walls he'd built around them.
He had grown up in a house where truth wasn't optional—it was legacy.
The Sinclair name meant something. It stood for justice.
His father was a federal judge, his mother a renowned defense attorney.
Dinner conversations were laced with case law and moral responsibility.
They never asked him if he wanted to fight for justice.
They simply raised him to believe he would.
"Always seek the truth, Benjamin," his father would say, voice steady as stone. "The law is nothing without it."
The Sinclair line was a proud one—long, storied, and righteous. Well, mostly.
His younger brother had broken the chain. Walked away. Chose grey zone over principle. And they've rarely spoken since then. Julian had laughed when Ben took the internship, warned him the system wasn't what their parents pretended it was.
Ben had dismissed it as bitterness, as weakness.
But he? He still believed. When he landed the internship, fresh out of law school, sharp suit and idealism intact, he thought this was it. This was where he'd earn his name. Where he'd carry the Sinclair flame forward, like every generation before him.
Until the day he realized the courtroom was never the battlefield. It was the cleanup site.
Ben's fingers tightened around the folder as memories surged back—memories he'd spent years burying under success and control.
They were defending a high-profile client—wealthy, influential, polished like a goddamn showroom floor.
Sterling & Co. Investments, one of the largest investment firms in the country, accused of defrauding pensioners. The kind of case that makes or breaks careers.
And the defendant? Niel Winters. Middle-aged. Humble. Steady hands and tired eyes—like a man who’d spent his life doing the right thing, and now didn’t understand how it had all gone so wrong.
The evidence had been clear—or so Ben had thought. Documents that traced the money trail clean as bone. Testimonies from coworkers. A timeline that painted a picture of deliberate fraud—by someone else.
He had gone over the file a dozen times, confident they’d prove Niel’s innocence. It was clear that he was fighting on the wrong side.
He could still see the courtroom.
The too-bright fluorescents. The judge's flat tone. The hollow echo of the gavel as it fell like a guillotine. That sound had never left him. It crept into his dreams, bleeding into sleepless nights, whispering through the cracks of otherwise perfect days.
Guilty.
He hadn’t stood. He’d watched. Sat in silence like a fucking intern while they gutted a man’s life six feet from him.
No power. No title. Just eyes and shame.
He hadn’t been a player back then. He’d barely been more than a shadow in someone else’s game. They’d handed him files to carry and orders to follow—and he had followed. He watched as they twisted the truth, buried the facts, steamrolled a man’s life for convenience and optics and wins on paper.
He remembered the accused’s wife—how she broke in real time, folding into herself like a building set for demolition.
The way the man’s eyes didn’t even fight. They just… dimmed. Like he knew no one in that courtroom had come for justice.
Ben had gone home that night and punched a hole in his apartment wall.
He hadn’t known what else to do.
Years passed. He built his name. His empire.
Brick by cold, controlled brick. But the nightmares stayed.
Sometimes he woke with his fists clenched and no air in his lungs.
Sometimes he still heard that gavel and felt like that powerless twenty-something kid again, watching someone drown while he stood frozen on the shore.
So he made a promise to himself: never again. No more irrelevance. No more silence. He would rise so high no one could shut him out. Control. Precision. Power. That was how you survived. That was how you won.
And now—Winters.
He stared at the file she’d left, its weight anchoring his hands. That name. That company. That case. All of it back in front of him like the universe had dragged it from the depths just to see if he would flinch.
And she had no idea.
She didn’t do it to hurt him. She wasn’t playing games.
She was fighting.
Digging.
Where he’d given up, she had kept clawing.
And she brought it to him—not because she knew what it was to him, but because she believed he was the one who would care. Who would help. Who might still give a damn.
Ben leaned back slowly, the air thin in his lungs. His throat felt raw. Not from anger—but from that old, familiar ache of something broken.
The case that cracked him open—was the same one that lit her fuse.
She didn’t know she’d handed him the very bullet he’d swallowed all those years ago.
But now? Now it was back in his hands—cold, loaded, waiting.
And for the first time in a long time—Benjamin Sinclair didn’t know if he’d pull the trigger.