Page 1 of You, Only You

1.Lindsey

The Sterling & Steele offices were thirty floors up, and I'd been rehearsing my opening line since floor twelve. By floor twenty, I'd scrapped it. By floor twenty-six, I'd scrapped the replacement. By floor thirty, I had nothing, which was fine. I was a forensic accountant. I was good at improvising when the numbers didn't add up. People were just numbers that talked back.

The offices were a monument to restrained power: glass walls offering a dizzying view of the city sprawled beneath like a kingdom of steel and ambition. My sensible heels, black, low, purchased during a Macy's clearance event I wasn't proud of, made no sound on the plush charcoal carpet. I clutched my leather folio against my chest, a shield containing my weapons: a state bar mandate, a list of ethics complaints, and every piece of research I'd been able to compile on the man I was about to meet.

Monster. That was the word in legal circles. A corporate attorney who didn't just win cases, he annihilated careers with remorseless precision. I'd read every complaint. Memorized the timeline. Prepared my questions with the kind ofobsessive thoroughness my college roommate once described as "genuinely alarming."

"Ms. Ashford?" The receptionist's voice cut through my mental preparation. She was young, polished, the kind of effortlessly put-together person that made me acutely aware of the loose thread I'd snipped from my blazer that morning. "Mr. Steele will see you now."

I followed her down a corridor that smelled faintly of leather and cedar. The offices we passed were occupied by people who didn't look up, their focus as curated as the minimalist art on the walls. I was an intruder here, and I felt everyone knew it.

The receptionist stopped before a heavy oak door. "Good luck," she said, and something in her tone made me wonder if she meant it as a warning rather than well-wishing.

I stepped inside before I could lose my nerve.

The office was a study in monochromatic control: steel, glass, slate grey. No personal photographs. No frivolous art. Just a massive desk of polished dark wood and a man standing before the floor-to-ceiling window, silhouetted against the glaring afternoon sky. He turned as I entered, and every prepared word evaporated from my brain.

The photos in the bar association directory had not done him justice. Not in the way that phrase usually meant, this wasn't about handsomeness, though objectively, irritatingly, he possessed that too. It was the intensity. He was tall, lean in a way that suggested discipline. Dark hair kept short. A suit so perfectly fitted it probably cost more than my monthly rent.

But it was his eyes that stopped me cold. Ice blue. The color of the winter sky just before a storm. They didn't skim over me; they tracked. From my dark hair secured in its practical bun, down over my outlet-store blazer, to my sensible shoes and back up again. Missing nothing.

I had the deeply uncomfortable sensation of being inventoried.

"Ms. Ashford." His voice was low, calm, completely devoid of welcome. A statement of fact, not a greeting.

"Mr. Steele." I matched his tone and stepped forward without extending my hand. I wouldn't give him the chance to reject it. "Thank you for making time. As outlined in the state bar's letter, I'll be conducting a compliance review covering the past three years, focusing specifically on the matters in these complaints."

I placed my folio on the edge of his desk. A declaration of war on polished wood.

He didn't move to sit. Those blue eyes followed the placement of the folder, then returned to my face with unsettling focus. "The complaints are baseless. Disgruntled competitors with bruised egos."

"That may be true," I said, extracting my tablet. "But bruised egos sometimes leave interesting paper trails."

Something flickered across his face, maybe surprise, at being pushed back. It vanished before I could name it. "Diane will provide access to whatever files you require. Conference Room B is available. I trust you'll be efficient."

A dismissal. He expected me to scurry off to some side room and drown in paperwork, safely away from him.

"I'd prefer to start with you, actually," I said, meeting his gaze and holding it. My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was a small miracle. "A few questions about firm protocols. Context for the document review."

The silence stretched between us, thick as smoke. The hum of the air conditioning seemed impossibly loud. I watched him calculate the cost of refusing, the appearance of having something to hide.

"By all means," he said finally, moving to sit behind his desk. He gestured to the chair opposite with an elegant hand. "Ask away."

I sat, spine straight, tablet balanced on my knee. The mahogany expanse between us felt both vast and uncomfortably intimate. I launched into my prepared questions: conflict check systems, client intake procedures. He answered with mechanical precision, his sentences clean and exact, revealing nothing beyond their literal meaning.

But his eyes never left me. They followed the movement of my stylus, flickered to my face when I paused, and remained fixed with predatory focus when I asked follow-up questions.

"Your associate turnover rate is unusually high," I observed, scrolling through the data I'd compiled. "Fifteen departures in eighteen months. That's nearly double the industry average."

"Legal work isn't for everyone." His tone suggested the departed were simply too weak for the demands of excellence.

"And yet they all seem to leave rather... abruptly." I looked up from my tablet. "Mid-case, sometimes. That's disruptive. Expensive. Firms usually try to avoid it."

"People make choices. I don't control them."

His words were smooth, reasonable. But something in the way he saidchoicesmade my instincts prickle. I'd spent years learning to hear the silent notes between spoken words: the hesitations, the careful phrasings that meant someone was dancing around a truth they didn't want to reveal.

I pressed further, shifting from general policy to specific cases. The Henderson matter. The Whitfield settlement. Each time, he deflected with practiced ease, citing privilege, strategy, and the unfortunate collateral damage of aggressive litigation.