CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ETHAN
BY THE TIME I DROPPED Lia and the girls at home and kissed their foreheads goodnight, the sun had already drowned behind the ocean.
I hadn't planned on going into the office.
I should've stayed home.
Should've let my wife curl into me.
Should've listened to the girls argue over who cheated at whatever game they'd been playing in the back seat. Should've let the ordinary noise of my life scrape away everything my father had told us.
Instead, I drove straight back into the city and went right back into the belly of it with Rafa, Knox, and Eric.
We tore Cortez's files apart for hours. Notes in three different handwritings covered the conference table.
Cross-references glowed beneath yellow and green highlighter.
Names, shell companies, dates, properties, and known associates spread across the wall display in connections that almost made sense until one missing piece broke the entire chain.
By two in the morning, we were running on fumes.
Knox had passed out on the leather sofa mid-sentence, one arm thrown over his face, shoes still on and tie loosened around his neck. Eric and Rafa had gone on a Wawa run for shitty sandwiches and coffee strong enough to dissolve tooth enamel.
I'd slept maybe eight hours in the last forty-eight. I tossed my pen onto the table and watched it roll across a stack of photographs before rubbing the back of my neck. Exhaustion had started blurring everything except my father's warning.
Cortez's previous counsel hadn't simply stopped representing him.
Two men had been found dead. Others had disappeared.
One man's wife had packed a single bag, taken their son out of school on a Tuesday, and vanished four days before her husband did.
Whether Cortez had ordered any of it remained something nobody had been able to prove in front of a jury, but the pattern was ugly enough that pretending it didn't exist would've been stupidity, and now he'd come to us.
Then there was Lila. So far, we'd found nothing.
Her employment history checked out clean.
Education checked out. Case access showed nothing that didn't belong there.
There was no secret trail connecting her to Cortez's organization.
No suspicious deposits. No convenient gaps in her résumé where someone might've been doing something they didn't want on paper.
Nothing except blood. Dominic Cortez was her biological father.
That fact alone wasn't evidence of a fucking thing.
I'd spent my entire career defending men whose children had changed their last names, moved across the country, built lives so deliberately ordinary they practically hummed with effort.
I wasn't going to decide Lila had inherited criminal intent along with half her DNA simply because it made the puzzle easier to finish.
What bothered me was Cortez implicating her at all. He'd put her name in our mouths.
Told us she knew things. Demanded she work his defense. Then left us to figure out what any of it meant.
I shoved my chair back hard enough that it rolled into the credenza behind me.
The sound cracked through the room. I needed air.
The rooftop access was several corridors away, past the east wing and the row of dark associate offices, but walking sounded better than sitting there until the words on the page in front of me stopped connecting to anything.
I stepped into the hallway and rolled my shoulders until something in my upper back released.
My thoughts drifted to Lia. She'd been quiet on the drive home.
Not the sharp quiet of someone choosing not to say something.
The deeper kind. The kind that meant she was already three steps ahead, turning something over, looking at it from every angle before she decided what it was.
Her hand had rested on my thigh the whole way. Nails tracing small, absent patterns against the fabric while she watched the city blur past the window. I smiled faintly and passed through the east wing.
Most of the offices were swallowed by darkness, the steady hum of emergency lights casting feeble, bluish-gold halos against the polished glass partitions. The faint hum echoed along the carpeted corridor. Then I saw it—an amber glow pooling beneath one door, like a lantern left burning in a storm.
My stride slowed. Marino. Irritation flared.
What was she doing here at two in the morning?
I halted outside her office. The door stood slightly ajar, a sliver of light cutting through the shadowy hallway.
Julia’s voice rattled in my mind: No closed doors.
No being alone with her. Technically, this door wasn’t closed—but that hardly made it a safe bet. I rapped once on the jamb.
“Lila.”
She lifted her head. For a heartbeat I didn’t recognize the woman before me.
Her usually immaculate bun had surrendered to gravity; dark waves tumbled around her narrow shoulders.
The complexion was streaked with smudged foundation.
An open bottle of red wine, its label peeling at the edges, stood sentry beside a half-empty glass.
Stains traced her cheeks where tears had carved raw channels; her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
“Mr. Marcelli,” she whispered, her voice ragged as sandpaper.
I followed her gaze to the bottle. “How much of that did you drink?”
She blinked, as though the wine had evaporated from sight. “Enough.”
“Clearly.” I leaned against the frame, arms crossed against my chest. “Why are you here?”
She let out a hollow laugh that rattled like broken glass. “Because apparently my apartment wasn’t far enough away from Dominic Cortez.”
My pulse hit a sharper beat. “You know—?”
Her gaze snapped back, furious. “That he decided to drag my name into his case? Yeah. I know.” Her lip curled, mascara splitting into rivulets.
“How did you find out?”
“My mother.” Lila reached out for the wine. Before her fingertips brushed the rim, I snatched it away and set it on the sleek mahogany desk, well out of reach.
“You’re done,” I said softly.
Her eyelids fluttered as if I’d slit her throat. “Give me my wine.”
“No.”
She inhaled, trembling with restrained fury. “It’s my office.”
“My building,” I corrected.
“Technically, the firm leases it,” she countered, voice sharp despite the wine. Even in this state she sounded like a litigator. Fantastic.
I watched her wrestle with the facts. “How much do you know about what happened at Coleman?”
She blinked, as if pulling her memory from a dark corner. “Enough to know he told you I’m his daughter.” Her throat bobbed on the last word, grief surfacing beneath her anger. “And enough to know he wants me tangled up in something I’ve spent my entire adult life running from.”
My gut twisted. Genuine or not, I couldn’t afford doubt. “Did you know he was approaching us?”
“No.”
“Did you know he wanted you on his defense team?”
Her head snapped up, pupils dilated. “No.”
“Ever done him legal favors?”
She hardened. “No.”
“Helped anyone connected to him?”
A tremor crept through her. “No.”
She swayed and reached out to steady herself on the desk edge. I raised a hand to catch her—instinct, and then doubt, made me hesitate. She noticed.
“I didn’t ask to be born into his shit,” she said, voice low and tense, each word clipped like a blade. “I didn’t use his name. I didn’t use his money. I put myself through school. I earned my place here.”
I closed the distance between us, the carpet muffling my steps. “I didn’t say otherwise.”
“You didn’t have to.” Her eyes flashed, dark as thunderclouds.
“Lila.”
“No.” She shook her head, a single, furious motion. “Do you know what it’s like to spend your entire life making sure nobody can look at what you’ve accomplished and say a man handed it to you, only for that man to walk into one fucking room and make everything about him?”
Her fury caught in my chest. Because that anger, at least, I understood. My own last name had opened doors before I was old enough to realize they existed. I’d spent years shutting down whispers that my father’s reputation was the only reason I ever walked through them.
“You’re drunk,” I said quietly, the words barely more than a breath.
“I’m aware.” She took a trembling step closer, the scent of cheap red wine clinging to her.
“And you’re upset.”
“Also aware.” She folded her arms, wrapping herself in her tailoring as if it could protect her from the truth.
“So I’m not having this conversation with you tonight.”
She laughed, but it was bitter and hollow. “Convenient.”
“Responsible.” I looked at my watch—its faint tick felt loud in the silent office. “You’re not driving.”
“I took a car,” she snapped.
“Good. Take another one home.”
She stared at me, dark eyes blazing in the glare of the desk lamp. “That’s it?”
“What exactly are you expecting?” I asked, voice steady.
“I don’t know.” Her honesty stunned me. She uncrossed her arms, pressing her hands to her sides. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
For the first time since she’d come in, she looked less like the polished associate with the impeccable posture and more like a woman whose carefully separated worlds had shattered at the seams.
“Go home, Lila.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “Do you believe me?”
“About what?”
“That I didn’t know.” Her voice cracked, vulnerability flickering across her cheeks.
I could have lied—said of course I believed her—but the words tasted sour. “I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”
Pain flashed in her eyes before she masked it with a practiced flick of her lashes. “Right.” She reached for her purse. “Of course.”
I stepped aside to let her pass, expecting that to be the end. Instead, she stopped. Too close. I caught the faint tang of wine on her breath, the soft swirl of her Jasmine perfume—the same heady scent I'd noticed the first time she’d come in.
My wife’s voice echoed in my mind: “No being alone with her.”
Too fucking late. “Lila.” My voice was low, a warning I hoped she’d heed.
She lifted her chin, gaze unwavering. “You really don’t see it, do you?”
I frowned. “See what?”
“The way people look at you.” She stepped even closer, so that her breath stirred the front of my shirt.
I almost laughed. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m still right.”
“Go home.”
Her voice dropped to a rough whisper. “You walk through that office like nobody can touch you.” Her hand pressed against the polished wood of my desk as she leaned in.
“Julia touches every part of me that matters,” I said, surprising both of us with the soft conviction in my own voice.
Her eyes searched mine, fierce now. “You love her.”
“More than anything.”
“Then she’s lucky.”
“No.” I shook my head, breath catching in my throat. “I am.”
Her hand crept up, fingers grazing the front of my shirt with trembling insistence. I caught her wrist, my palm firm against hers. “Lila.”
It was the last warning. Somewhere in the back of my mind, sober Lila would have understood. Maybe even drunk Lila did. But her gaze slid down to my mouth—hungry, desperate. I saw it coming and had the time to move.
That was the part I would remember: the soft press of her lips, warm with wine, the faint rustle of her inhaled gasp, and the electric shock that emptied my mind for a single, suspended second.
Reality slammed back into me like a freight train. Julia.
“What the fuck?” I spat.
Lila staggered backward, her stiletto heels clicking sharply on the marble floor, eyes wide as saucers. I stared at her—then at the slender hand still curled around my wrist—before yanking free. The snap of our contact echoed in the hushed office.
My heart thundered so violently I thought it would burst through my ribs. Not because that kiss had meant anything—God, no—but because it had happened at all. And because for the fraction of a second before I broke away, I’d let it.
Lila pressed trembling fingers to her lips, the faint scent of red wine clinging to her breath. “I—”
“Don’t.” My voice was low, raw with anger. She froze, as if my word had cut her in two. “Don’t explain. Don’t apologize. Don’t say another fucking word.”
Tears welled in her eyes, catching the fluorescent light overhead. I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to. I stepped back until the air between us turned icy. My lungs pumped in ragged bursts. “You’ve been drinking. You’re upset. I’m exhausted. None of that excuses what just happened.”
Her chin trembled once, then she locked her jaw. “You’re right.”
I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling the rough stubble graze my palm.
The bitter tang of wine lingered on my tongue, making my stomach roll.
Julia—seven hours ago she’d sat beside me at my parents’ dinner table, warm candlelight softening every line on her face.
Hours before that, she’d spelled out her only requests: visibility.
Boundaries. No shadows where someone could twist the truth. I’d agreed, because she was right.
Now I stood alone in an executive office with that woman’s drunken taste still on my lips. This wasn’t some corporate chess move. It wasn’t strategy or a trap. I had crossed this line all by myself.
“Call your car,” I said, voice taut.
She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“Wait in reception. Security will stay with you until it arrives.”
She snatched up her purse and paused in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the hallway light. I didn’t meet her eyes. “Mr. Marcelli—”
“Go.”
Her heels clicked away. In the sudden quiet, I counted the seconds—one, two—then slipped into the staff bathroom.
The harsh fluorescents buzzed as I turned on the faucet to a cold, relentless trickle.
Face to face with myself in the mirror: same strong jaw, same wedding band, same man who’d looked his wife in the eye and vowed nothing could break us.
I scrubbed at my mouth—once, twice—water pooling at the drain, but the reflection didn’t change. Three seconds. Four. Five. Long enough to know the truth. She kissed me. I was tired. We’d both been off guard. True. Yet none of it erased the one immutable fact, her mouth was on mine.
My fingers clenched the edge of the sink until my knuckles whitened. “Fuck.” The word sounded small and hollow in the empty room.
For the first time in my marriage, I had something to confess that I knew would shatter Julia, and for the first time, I understood why cowards looked for every excuse not to go home.