The Bar Exam the Former Witness to Death
Caleb Sterling was throwing money at the problem, and it was working. The marketing accounts and hired trolls he'd unleashed were brutally effective, kicking up a storm of online outrage far bigger than the simple post Avery had made herself.
It was a good thing the Sterling family business wasn't publicly traded, if it were, the stock would have been in free fall. Even so, the company was in chaos. The day after the scandal blew up, shareholders, sensing a sinking ship, started quietly looking for buyers.
Warren Sterling, who was already in New York trying to clean up the mess his daughter Lorraine had made, was so enraged by this new disaster that he actually ended up in the hospital.
When Avery saw the news on X, she couldn't bring herself to care. She didn't need to follow the drama anymore.
She knew.
Caleb Sterling wouldn't stop until he'd torn a few sizable chunks out of his family's fortune. Though she'd never met the man, she'd known what he was up to the moment he'd secretly found her brother and passed him a business card. What happened to her had just been the spark he needed.
Caleb wanted to crush Warren Sterling's side of the family even more than she did.
The next morning, Avery woke with the sun. She got up, got ready, and did a final check of her bar exam admission ticket and ID before tucking them into a clear folder. After a quick bowl of oatmeal at the hotel restaurant, she arrived at the University of Finance and Economics at exactly 7:20 a.m.
The exam was split into two sessions, 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., and you had to be there an hour early for security and ID verification. A long line of students already snaked away from the checkpoint.
The early morning light cast a pale gold glow over the campus. Avery, in a simple white hoodie and sweatpants with her hair pulled into a high ponytail, had a way of drawing the eye. The low buzz of conversation in the line faltered as she walked through the gates.
When it was her turn, the proctor's eyes lingered on her ID for a beat longer than necessary.
He looked up. "You're Avery Hayes."
Avery smiled and nodded.
The proctor's gaze slid back to her face, his voice low with a strange, quiet hope. "I hope you pass the Bar. And that you get to finish what she set out to do."
His voice was barely a whisper, but it hit Avery like a physical blow, crashing straight into her heart.
She looked up sharply, her eyes locking with his. In his expression, she saw it: regret.
A hazy figure swam into focus in her mind. This proctor... he was a staff member from the New York Courthouse. He'd been there when that abusive man murdered her. He was the one who had knelt beside her, pressing his hands against the gushing wound in her stomach, trying to stop the bleeding.
But the knife had gone too deep. So deep it had stolen any chance she had of being saved.
Technically, she had died in this stranger's arms.
A cold shock, the memory of dying, shot up her spine.
Avery's fingertips went numb, and for a moment, the world went fuzzy.
She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing down the tremor that ran through her, and looked up.
She gave the man who had once tried to save her a grateful smile, then stepped into the examination room.
The first day of the Bar was multiple choice, with public law in the morning. When the bell rang, the room filled with the quiet, frantic clicking of mice and tapping of keyboards.
But Avery couldn't focus. Running into the man who'd witnessed her death had completely thrown her.
His face, the memory of blood, it all kept flashing in her mind, pulling her out of the moment.
She had to sit there for what felt like a long time, just breathing, pushing the clutter from her mind until she could finally settle in.
This year's exam was a lot harder than the one she'd taken before.
But for Avery, it had only been about twenty days since she'd last been a practicing lawyer.
The legal knowledge was still sharp in her mind, and she found the questions almost laughably easy.
She saw the traps and loopholes instantly, the kind of problems that would have other students sweating.
Once or twice, a faint smile even touched her lips, a stark contrast to the stressed-out faces around her.
Less than an hour and a half in, she'd finished every question and checked her work.
She stretched, rubbing her dry eyes. As soon as the clock hit the two-hour mark, the earliest you could submit, she confidently clicked the button on the screen. A small window popped up: *Submission Successful*.
Avery stood up, and the scrape of her chair legs was the only sound in the dead-silent room. Every single person in the room froze, heads snapping up.
"Wait, what? Did she just submit?"
"What time is it?"
"I'm not even done with Criminal Law, and she's... done?"
A brief, shocked murmur rippled through the room as dozens of eyes locked onto Avery. The girl sitting next to her was so startled she almost clicked the wrong answer. A few of the more anxious test-takers started to panic, their keyboards clattering loudly.
Under the collective stare, Avery simply walked out of the classroom, her high ponytail swinging behind her. Her casual exit seemed to be a personal insult to everyone else still sweating over the exam. The proctor had to clear his throat to quiet the renewed flurry of frantic typing.
By 11:30, when the morning session officially ended, the story of the girl in Exam Room Three who'd submitted ninety minutes early had already spread like wildfire. Some were in awe; others sneered. The opinions were all over the place.
Avery heard the whispers but didn't let them get to her. She was a seasoned professional. Why would she waste time arguing with a bunch of college kids?
After a short lunch break, she did the exact same thing in the afternoon private law session. This time, the other students didn't even seem shocked. Submitting that early meant one of two things: you were either a genius or you'd given up. They'd find out which when the results were posted.
Before leaving the university, Avery snapped a quick photo of the campus and posted it to X.
'#NewYorkCity, see you next month.'
She'd been carefully cultivating her social media presence for the past few days, posting daily updates and slowly building an audience.
After leaving the school, Avery headed straight back to the hotel. She was just walking up to the entrance when she saw him. Leo Foster, his hair a total mess, was leaning against an SUV with a cigarette dangling from his lips.
He spotted her, flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the pavement, and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. He stumbled toward her, his walk unsteady.
"Dr. Hayes, you've really got some nerve," he grumbled, getting right in her face. "I don't see you for one day, and you drop this massive bomb in my lap."
His words threw her. Avery just stared at him, confused.
Seeing her expression, Leo spelled it out.
"Those pictures online yesterday. That was you, right? I remember Maya saying you went to the restroom that night. You went upstairs to get pictures of Lorraine's little dinner party, didn't you?"
He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair.
"And now that mangy dog Caleb Sterling has somehow figured out I was at the Pinnacle Club, too. He's on my ass, swearing I'm the one who took them and demanding I delete them."
Avery stared at him, completely baffled.
What kind of bizarre game was Caleb playing? How in the world had he managed to pin this on Leo?