Chapter 9 Stephan
Stephan
The office is as quiet as the grave on a Sunday afternoon. With a case this big, I expected one or two associates to be in, but they can do all of that from home now.
I’ve dressed down—slacks and a pale pink polo instead of my usual armor. On any other Sunday, I’d be on the course with Cass and Damien, burning off the week with eighteen holes and expensive scotch. Instead, I’ve been buried in discovery documents since Friday night’s call about the leak.
I spread our findings across the conference table in my office. Sunlight filters through the floor-to-ceiling glass, gilding everything in gold.
I take my seat and study Katie’s notes again. Thorough. Efficient. Precise. Everything I could want in an associate. She’s good—damn good—and even if I weren’t attracted to her, I’d still know it.
Which makes this whole thing worse. I can’t get rid of her, and she’s the only one I can reasonably rule out as the mole. Nuns don’t leak sensitive information to the press. I doubt she’d even know how. And she’s got real skin in the game with her sister’s illness.
At 11:30, the elevator dings. The sound carries down the quiet hall like an alarm bell.
Katie steps out.
She’s wearing a white sundress scattered with red flowers and a red cardigan over top. Her hair falls in loose waves around her shoulders, and there’s the faintest hint of makeup—just enough to make me wonder if she came from church.
My mouth goes dry.
“Good morning, Mr. Marek,” she says softly, stopping just inside the doorway.
I rise automatically, buttoning a reflex that doesn’t exist on this shirt. “Morning, Katie.” Her name feels too intimate spoken aloud. I clear my throat. “You’re early.”
“You said noon. I didn’t want to be late.”
“Punctuality is a virtue,” I say, gesturing toward the table. “Come in.”
She crosses the room, the click of her heels swallowed by the carpet. The light catches her hair—copper and gold—and for one disorienting second, the sterile office doesn’t look sterile at all.
I motion toward the spread of files. “I’ve laid out the trial data by phase. We’ll start with the discrepancies you flagged on Friday.”
She sets her bag down and takes the seat beside me. Not across—beside. Too close. I tell myself it’s practicality. The files, the monitor, the notes. Nothing more.
She opens her folder, organized with surgical neatness. “I’ve isolated the patient logs with inconsistent classifications,” she says, voice steady.
“Show me.”
She slides a document toward me, her fingertip brushing the edge of the page. Not me, not even my hand—but it’s enough. Heat coils low in my chest. I glance at the data to distract myself.
Her handwriting runs in the margins—precise, looping, and careful. She explains her logic point by point, unaware I’m watching her mouth more than the words.
When she pauses, I force myself to speak. “Good work. You’ve got a meticulous eye.”
She smiles, small and restrained. “Thank you, sir.”
Sir. My breath catches. If she knew how many women I’ve paid to say that word, would she still look at me the same way? Would she still believe there’s anything worth redeeming under all this polish and power?
For a moment, I forget where we are—the sunlight, the quiet hum of the air conditioner, the scent of her perfume edging out the sterile air. Then she glances up, waiting for instruction, and I force the distance back between us.
“Let’s continue,” I say, my voice steadier than I feel.
A knock breaks the silence.
Annie steps in, holding a white paper bag. “Lunch, Mr. Marek.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She sets the bag on the side table and glances at me, curious but too professional to ask why I’m here on a Sunday with an associate.
“You can head home, Annie. No reason for us all to suffer on a beautiful spring day.”
She nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The door clicks shut, and the quiet folds in around us. If this looks improper, I don’t just lose the case. I lose the firm. A partner accused of misconduct doesn’t get to argue integrity in court; he gets quietly retired before the press smells blood.
I hand Katie a turkey sandwich from the deli downstairs. “I hope you like turkey.”
“I’m not picky,” she says, taking it from me. Our fingers brush, a spark of contact that lands somewhere between static and temptation.
“This place makes my favorite sandwiches in the city,” I say, unwrapping the black-and-white paper and spreading it across the table—clean lines, no crumbs.
Katie mirrors me, careful and composed.
“Are you from the city, Mr. Marek?” she asks.
“Avondale,” I answer, taking a bite of my sandwich. The Dijon stings pleasantly at the back of my throat.
Her mouth curves into a small smile. “A Polish boy. You must have grown up Catholic.”
My jaw tightens around the bite. Catholic. The word tastes like iron and incense—like kneeling too long, confessing sins I never stopped committing.
“I did,” I say finally.
“Then we have something in common.” She smiles, soft and unguarded, almost too innocent to be real.
Something in my chest shifts, unwelcome and sharp.
I reach for my coffee just to have something to do with my hands.
My jaw stays tight. We have nothing in common.
She remembers the hymns; I remember the way the incense tried—and failed—to cover the smell of stale beer on my father’s breath.
She remembers the grace; I remember the penance.
“I haven't set foot in a church for twenty years, Katie,” I say, my voice sounding harsher than I intended in the quiet room. “I find that the law is much better at delivering justice than God is.”
She doesn't flinch at my tone. She just tilts her head, her eyes searching mine with that terrifying "Sister O'Shea" clarity. “Justice and mercy aren't the same thing, Mr. Marek.”
“In this office, mercy is just another word for a mistake.” I look away from her, focusing on the sandwich wrap I’m folding into a perfect, sharp-edged square. I need to change the subject before I tell her things I’ve never told anyone. “I’m not as pious as you, Ms. O'Shea.” An understatement.
“I’m not a nun anymore, Mr. Marek.” Her smile is faint, almost teasing. “I’m not pious either. Sometimes I take communion without going to confession.”
A vision flashes—Katie on her knees here, not in a cathedral, lips shaping a prayer that has nothing to do with God. The thought hits hard; I drag myself back. I don’t want to protect her. I want to be one of her sins. The thought sickens me, but not enough to stop it.
I clear my throat. “Let’s get back to work. Focus on the Halcyon Phase Three data. Specifically, the patient exclusions in the 20-to-30 age demographic.”
Her posture tightens; the light in her eyes flattens.
“Twenty to thirty,” she repeats. Her voice is flat.Almost hollow.
“Something wrong, Ms. O’Shea?”
She looks down at the page, her thumb tracing the name Halcyon as if it’s a bruise. “No,” she says, though her knuckles are white. “Nothing at all.” The distance between us closes again—too small a space for this much restraint.
I pull up the new spreadsheets on my laptop, the glow reflecting off the glass table between us. “Start with the data from site seventeen,” I say, handing her the file.
She takes it carefully. She doesn’t flinch this time.
Her eyes move quickly over the numbers, concentration furrowing her brow. “These entries,” she says, tapping the page, “don’t match the original trial results. Either the site used different criteria, or someone reclassified data before submission.”
“Someone did,” I say. “Our job is to understand it before opposing counsel does—quietly.”
She glances up at the word quietly. “And if that someone knew the drug could hurt people?”
The question hangs between us—moral, and dangerous.
I meet her eyes. “Then they’ll wish they hadn’t.” Whether she hears threat or justice, I can’t tell—and maybe it doesn’t matter.
Her lips part, just slightly. I can see the pulse in her throat.
“Keep reading,” I say, voice lower now.
She does. The sound of paper shifting and the faint rhythm of her breathing fill the room.
We work side by side until the sun dips below the horizon, painting the city in reds and purples. The glow reflects off the glass walls, spilling across the table, turning our files and empty coffee cups to gold.
The office is silent except for the hum of the air conditioning and the soft scratch of Katie’s pen. Every now and then, she bites her lip when she’s thinking. I shouldn’t notice, but I do.
When I shift to reach for another file, our shoulders brush.
“Sorry,” she murmurs.
“It’s fine,” I say, too quickly. “You’re fine.”
The space between us collapses by degrees—slow enough to notice, fast enough to be dangerous.
She’s highlighting something in the margin when she says quietly, “I didn’t think law would feel like this.”
“Like what?”
She glances up. “Like walking a tightrope between what’s right and what’s required.”
The words land harder than they should. “Welcome to corporate litigation,” I say, but my voice sounds rougher than I intend.
“Will I ever get used to it?” She asks in earnest.
The truth would crush her, and part of me wants to protect her from it. The other part wants her to see it — to see me.
“You don’t,” I say finally. “You just learn to live with it. I figured out a long time ago that no one is truly good in this world. Might as well make some money while we’re here.”
Her eyes drop to the floor. “Mary is.”
The words are soft, almost an afterthought, but they land like glass breaking between us.
Something in her voice reminds me of my mother.
A woman who believed there was good in everyone.
A woman who never stopped believing there was good in my father—even when his fists told a different story.
That kind of faith made me furious, and the distance between us never closed before she died.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. The sunlight has almost disappeared now, the office caught between day and night, and all I can see is the faint reflection of her face in the glass—fragile, defiant, and painfully human.
The words stop me cold. The only sound in the office is the hum of the air vent and the faint city noise pressing at the glass.
She’s still looking down, as if she’s said too much. The light on her face is fading, warm at the edges and gray in the center, like she’s half in one world and half in another.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say quietly. “Maybe she is.”
When she looks up, her eyes are bright with something I can’t name—hope, maybe, or disappointment. The distance between us feels thinner than it should, stretched tight as a wire.
I stand, meaning to give myself space, but she rises at the same time. We’re too close, caught in the same current. The movement stirs the air between us; her perfume—something faint and clean—hits like a memory I can’t place.
Neither of us speaks. There’s nothing to say that won’t break whatever this is.
I should step back.
I don’t.
She looks up at me, and the moment holds—quiet, electric, suspended. It’s not touch—not yet—but it might as well be.
Something flickers in her eyes—fear and want mixing.
My throat tightens with the effort it takes not to reach for her.
Her lips part, a breath caught halfway to a word.
I want to step closer, as if just being in her orbit could cleanse me of a lifetime of mistakes, but I don’t dare.
She’s still my subordinate. But God, if I don’t touch her, I will light on fire from the inside out.
I can feel her breathing, the faintest shift of air that reaches me before she looks away. The spell breaks. She gathers her files with shaking hands.
I clear my throat, hoping the table hides what this costs me.. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off tomorrow? There are still a few hours of daylight left. I’d hate for you to have to spend them with me.”
She opens her mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to ask me why I’m suddenly hiding behind manners—but then she stops herself. “I’ll email you what I find first thing in the morning.”
“Good,” I say, even though it sounds harsher than I mean it.
She gathers her bag. The chair legs scrape the floor, and the sound feels final. But before she closes the door behind her, she turns back to me, and the sunset paints her in an ethereal hue—gold bleeding into rose, catching the edges of her hair.
“For what it’s worth,” she says quietly. “I like working with you.”
The words shouldn’t matter, but they do. They hit like a confession, devastating and straightforward.
I manage a nod. “Get home safe, Ms. O’Shea.”
She smiles—small and fleeting—and then she’s gone.
The door clicks shut, and the silence that follows doesn’t feel like peace. It feels like penance.
I sink back into my chair, the leather cool against my palms where they are still humming from the memory of her skin. Outside, the last of the light bleeds out of the city, turning the skyscrapers into jagged shards of glass and shadow.
I’m grateful Annie can keep a secret. Otherwise, my inbox would be full of ethics memos by morning, reminders about fraternization policies, and optics. No one’s accused me of anything—but guilt doesn’t wait for evidence.
She’s an associate. I tell myself the lie again. A variable. A line I’ve spent my entire life learning not to cross.
But the air is a traitor; it still smells of her perfume. Her voice lingers in the corners of the room like a prayer I was never meant to hear.
“For what it’s worth, I like working with you.”
I close my eyes and let the words settle—one heartbeat of warmth before I shove them behind the same iron-bolt memories of my father. I can’t afford to be human tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll be the monster they expect. But here, in the dark, I’ll let myself be the man she thinks I am.