Page 46 of The Fire We Make

A small part of her enjoyed making the man uncomfortable.

“What are your plans for lunch?” he asked as they walked the hallway and entered the elevator. He pushed the button for their floor and turned to Joy for an answer.

“I usually work through lunch,” she said. She usually used the time when everyone was out of office or distracted to go through the client list or read the reports from Glock.

“Overachiever, huh?”

Joy shrugged.

“Guess that’s why you kick ass the way you do.”

Joy chuckled in response.

In the month since she’d been at the firm, she’d begun to make a name for herself among the associates and partners for her prowess in the criminal cases. The senior attorneys seemed to play hot potato with her, bouncing her around amongst themselves whenever they needed her specific expertise on a case. Joy didn’t mind.

It had been a while since she’d felt needed. Wanted. Knowing that she brought value to the table made her chest swell with the type of belonging she’d been missing.

The elevator dinged and opened, depositing them on the third floor.

“Well when you can take a break from being Johnny Cochran, we should get lunch sometime.”

Joy laughed.

She turned to him, looking into his blandly handsome face. He looked kind and polished, like the trust fund kids she’d gone to school with. He looked… normal.

She would chew him up and spit him out. One episode and he’d likely run for the hills.

“I don’t fuck where I eat,” she said, turning her back to take a seat on the other side of the table. Her eyes trailed to the head of the glass conference table to find Ace’s eyes already boring a hole into her.

His jaw was hard and his eyes were cold. If Joy didn’t know any better, he almost looked…angry.

She held his hard stare, meeting it with her own and quirked a brow.

After a moment, his lips softened and he looked away clearing his throat.

“If everyone is present, let’s get started.”

The chorus of shuffling of notebooks and clicking of pens sounded around the table and conversations ceased.

“There was a raid in Manhattan and a few of our clients were taken into custody. We were able to get most of the lower level soldiers out but they’re holding a few of them with priors without bail…”

Joy paid attention as Ace divvied up the cases to senior attorneys. She listened intently as they discussed strategy, most being especially aggressive in their approaches with Ace as their audience.

Shawn and Tonya, another senior associate Joy had worked closely with before, went back and forth on the approach for a case and Joy kept up with each argument like she was watching a tennis match, weeding through biases and egos to get to the facts.

While Ace was silent, the rest of the conference room was split, one half siding with Shawn and the other with Tonya.

“What do you think, Thibodeaux?” Tonya directed to her.

All eyes – including Ace’s – swung to her, awaiting her verdict.

She ignored his gaze in her periphery and instead focused on Tonya.

Joy sat up straight and cleared her throat. “Honestly? Neither.”

An uproar started around the room but Joy held her hand up to silence them as she spoke. As directed, the room quieted down.

Though she was technically at the bottom of the food chain at the firm, Joy had been raised to be a queen. Her aura exuded that of someone with a longer tenure than she had but no one questioned it so long as they continued winning cases off of her advice.