CHAPTER SIX
ETHAN
THE FRONT DOOR SHUT behind me, and for a moment, all I heard was the faint rush of the ocean as I breathed in the fresh sea air.
The house was a custom labor of love Julia and I had designed together.
It sat elevated above the waterline because Miami made you paranoid that way, but from the balconies, we could see the entire stretch of our private beach.
My everyday car waited in the drive, sleek and black.
Flashy enough to draw respect, powerful enough to back it up, but not grossly dramatic.
I hadn't bothered pulling it into the garage last night.
Briefcase on the passenger seat. Travel mug in the cup holder.
Phone where it belonged. With the press of a button, my playlist synced, bass rumbling low through the speakers as I eased down the drive and through the electric gates.
For a moment, I thought about my Julia. The sight of her in my shirt, warm skin exposed where it hung from one shoulder. That silky, copper-auburn hair twisted up. Hazel eyes fixed on the pancakes she'd been flipping like she hadn't once stood beneath chandeliers, playing for packed audiences.
She was still the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on.
And the twins. Aria and Ellie, already polar opposites, both tugging at different sides of me. Ari with her fire. Ellie with her quiet. I'd built a fortress around the three of them, and I'd done my best to make sure it was never penetrated by outside forces.
But I couldn't linger on them, not now.
Work always demanded more.
The Marcelli Group wasn't just a firm. It was an empire housed in thirty floors of steel and glass that caught the Miami sun like a blade. I'd built it with Rafa Ortiz and Knox Wilder, the two men I trusted more than anyone alive apart from Eric.
Rafa had been with me since Georgetown, all fire and grit, a street fighter who still carried himself like he was ready to throw the first punch even in a thousand-dollar suit that fit him like a second skin.
He could dig up leverage on anyone, anywhere—the kind of man who knew which palms to grease to make evidence appear or disappear without leaving so much as a paper trail.
Knox was the face. Smooth as glass, our in with corporate and high-net-worth clients whose hands he shook while his eyes already calculated their net worth.
He could charm senators and sharks alike, his polished smile never quite reaching his cool gray eyes—more than capable of hiding a knife behind perfect teeth.
He'd charmed Latoya too, eight years ago now and counting, and sometimes I still saw the flicker of surprise in his expression when he looked at her, like he couldn't believe his own luck.
Serena, my baby sister and five years younger than me, had recently come on board too. She was a shark in the courtroom, always out for blood—the kind of attorney who could eviscerate a witness with nothing but a raised eyebrow and three carefully chosen words.
Together, we were untouchable.
Our specialty was criminal defense, but not the kind they taught you in law school.
We took the cases others wouldn't touch—cartel liaisons who arrived with silent bodyguards, racketeering empires built on other people's bones, men with blood on their hands but enough money to wash it clean in the court of public opinion.
The public saw us as brilliant defenders spinning gold from garbage.
The underworld saw us as necessary armor—the only thing standing between them and a life sentence.
And I sat at the center of it all, behind a desk carved from a single piece of black walnut, my father's gifted watch heavy on my wrist.
Thanks to the men and women who came before me, the Marcelli name carried weight, for better or worse. My father had been the same before me—respected in boardrooms, feared in back alleys, his presence lingering in these halls like expensive cigar smoke.
I’d sworn I’d build something even bigger than he had, and I did. Yet every time I slipped through those wrought-iron gates and watched Julia and the girls shrink in my rearview, that familiar slab of responsibility settled across my shoulders.
Out here, the world wasn’t as simple as pancakes and school drop-offs.
Twenty-five minutes later, the Maserati purred into my reserved bay in the underground garage.
Overhead LED strips cast a cool glow on its carbon-fiber curves.
I killed the engine’s low rumble, snatched my leather duffel, and walked to the private lift.
A soft click as my keycard met the reader, digits tapped on a backlit keypad—and the steel door slid open with the quiet efficiency of money well spent.
The lift ascended smoothly, walls of tempered glass and polished steel humming faintly.
When the doors parted, I stepped onto the glass bridge spanning the building’s core.
Beneath me, the lobby buzzed. Ahead, Miami’s skyline glittered—a constellation of neon, steel, and glass mirrored in Biscayne Bay.
The Marcelli Group had come a long way since the three of us—my partner, his brother, and I—launched in a cramped rented suite under our fathers’ watchful eyes, but not their money. That line between what was ours and what was handed down had always mattered.
What began under flickering fluorescents had grown into a sixty-strong team: junior associates chasing precedent, investigators tailing cold trails, paralegals buried under stacks of depositions, analysts parsing every clause, and the silent legions whose names never sat on a payroll but whose work kept our clients breathing free air.
The mahogany reception desk stretched across the lobby, its surface gleaming beneath soft sconces.
Frankie sat behind it, his lined face breaking into that wry grin I’d known since law school.
Today he was flanked by his nephew Tobias, the eager apprentice not yet acquainted with our world’s burdens.
“Morning, Frankie. Tobias.” My voice cut through the muted hum. Frankie’s eyes twinkled. “Morning, boss—coffee already in hand, just how you like it.” Steam curled from the mug.
Tobias snapped to attention in his freshly pressed suit. “Good morning, Mr. Marcelli.”
I tapped my finger on the cup’s handle, suppressing a grin. The kid had promise.
I stepped into the next private lift. Here, the recycled air tasted a touch crisper.
When the doors opened onto the executive floor, Laurel rose.
She was precision personified: a black sheath dress tailored to every contour, hair in a sleek chignon that traced the line of her neck, a whisper of jasmine drifting behind her.
“Morning, Ethan,” she said with a slight nod—one of the few entitled to my first name, largely because I respected the hell out of her wife.
Beside her, Eric—my PA and oldest confidant—waited by my office door. From his cropped red curls to the glint of his wire-rim glasses, everything about him radiated calm efficiency. His tablet glowed with the day’s agenda, blue eyes flicking across the screen.
We entered my office together. The door closed behind us, swallowed by silence.
Overhead, a modern chandelier fractured light across the obsidian glass desk, where leather-bound case files formed a silent fortress.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city sprawled—restless power and possibility.
Eric exhaled. “You’ve got Ruiz at eleven, prep with Rafa at nine, and Knox wants five minutes on the new client intake. Laurel’s cleared your calls until lunch. And...” He paused, gaze sharpening. “Lila was in early. She left drafts on your desk.”
The words hung between us. Lila was never late. Lila was always in early. Ambition like hers didn’t sleep. She was twenty-eight and sharper than most of the men twice her age. She had the kind of instinct you couldn't teach, and read people the way Julia read music.
One look, and she knew where to press, where to dig, and where to break them open.
She admired me, openly with a reverence that I'd come to appreciate, and not because I needed the ego stroke, but because I recognized what it was.
She wasn't fawning. She was studying. Every piece of work she left on my desk came with the implicit question: Is this what you'd do?
Tell me how to be better. And she listened when I answered.
Really listened, the way people did when they genuinely gave a shit about what came out of my mouth.
That was rare.
That was useful.
I set my travel mug on the desk and picked up the top file she'd left.
Her handwriting was precise in the margins, the kind of meticulous annotation that most junior associates only faked for the cameras.
Lila's notes were for her own reference—clean, organized, the product of a mind that refused to leave anything unexamined.
I flipped through the first three pages, scanning the case law she'd flagged, the precedent she'd cross-referenced, the holes she'd already begun plugging before I'd even opened my eyes this morning. Not bad. Not bad at all.
"She pulled the Vargas ruling from last fall," I said, more to myself than to Eric. "Nobody else caught that."
Eric didn't respond immediately. I glanced up to find him watching me with that particular stillness he reserved for moments when he had something to say and was deciding whether to say it. I'd known him long enough to read the pause.
"What?"
"Nothing." He adjusted his glasses with one finger.
I looked back down at the file, suppressing the faintest curl of satisfaction at the corner of my mouth. Five in the morning. On a Monday. The girl had drive that would've made my father sit up and take notice, and my father didn't sit up for anyone.
"Tell her I want to see her after the Ruiz prep," I said, setting the draft aside and pulling my chair in. "And get me whatever she's got on the Montoya deposition timeline. I want it before lunch."
Eric nodded, already tapping at his tablet. "She already compiled it. It's in the folder."