Chapter 2 Liability
POV: Catherine
11:27 a.m.
I walk into Wood & Sons Legacies, Garden District, three hours late with the shame of it clinging to my skin. I am usually the first one in, the one who makes up for not having a degree by working the hours no one else wants, and today I look like a clerical error someone forgot to delete.
I am still wearing yesterday’s suit from Magazine Street. It smells like exhaustion and cold tobacco, and the seam cuts into my hip with every step as if the fabric itself resents that I exist. I hold my bag against my chest and keep my head down, with only one goal in mind: reach my cubicle and disappear for five minutes so I can breathe.
But to get there I have to pass his glass wall.
The blinds are half-open.
Eric is already there.
He is wearing a charcoal suit, his back straight and his jaw locked, with a file open in front of him that he is not actually reading.
He looks up at the exact moment I walk past.
Shit.
He taps twice, sharply, against the glass.
“In here.”
My stomach drops and I stop before I push the door open.
The air changes instantly. Black coffee, warm wood, and him.
“Close the door, Miss Fermon.”
I do as he says, and my hands are trembling slightly so I hide them behind my back as if they were something indecent.
His gaze catalogs everything without mercy. The wrinkled collar, the dark circles under my eyes, the red mark the tight fabric left on my skin.
He always sees everything.
“The Ashford-Laval file was supposed to be on my desk at nine a.m. Hearing at two p.m., Judge Morales, Poydras Street. It is eleven thirty. Where is it?”
His voice is low and controlled, and that is worse than shouting. When a man shouts you can shout back, but with him there is nothing to hold onto, only a smooth and icy surface.
“The clerk’s office closed yesterday. I have the USB. I am printing it now.”
“I don’t want excuses. I want results.”
I lower my eyes, and against my will my gaze catches on his mouth.
Bad idea.
My mind slips immediately. I picture him stepping closer, his hand at my jaw, not with brutality but with enough certainty to keep me in place. The world outside the glass wall disappears, St. Charles and the traffic fade away, and there is only the two of us suspended between the silence and the fall.
I shake my head slightly to clear the image.
“Look at me when I am talking to you.”
I flinch.
His eyes shift in the light. They are not brown, there is a fleeting gold fleck that appears and disappears.
It’s the light, I tell myself. Just the light.
“That’s a shame,” he murmurs.
His voice drops even lower than the silence.
“You’re intelligent, Catherine. But intelligence does not make up for disorder. You look like you walked through a storm. And when you enter a courtroom with me, you are my image. Right now, you are a liability.”
Liability.
The word does not land loudly, but it sinks deep and bruises more than a shout because it stays longer than pain.
He moves past me, too close, and the heat coming off his body changes the temperature of the air. It is absurd and I hate that I notice that kind of detail, but I notice it anyway.
“Dress. File. Twenty minutes. Or you clear out your cubicle.”
Silence settles between us.
“Is that clear?”
Shame, exhaustion, rage. I feel all three at once.
“Yes, Mr. Wood.”
12:47 p.m.
I set everything on his desk. The bound file. The black dress on the armchair. Everything is perfect, maybe too perfect.
Eric stands with his back to the glass wall, his hands in his pockets. He never needs to raise his voice.
“I expect professionalism, Miss Fermon. I pay you well above market rate for consistent results. Don’t make me regret my choice.”
Every word is surgical, clean, and unassailable, and yet it cuts deeper than a blade.
I clench my fists in my pockets without answering and I leave.
The second my cubicle door clicks shut, I finally exhale the air I have been holding since I walked in. I collapse into my chair.
And my phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
Message:
Don’t sign the contract, Catherine.