Ava’s POV
The memo was three pages.
I had spent four nights on those three pages.
Marcus Cole didn't even look at page two.
"This is emotional, Ava," he said, flipping my research on Leonardo Vance shut like it was a takeout menu. "You’re arguing like a daughter who wants to prove something, not like a lawyer."
The words landed harder because he was right. I did want to prove something.
Across his desk, Ethan's internship evaluation was already framed. Top of his class at Harvard Law. My father had smiled when he talked about Ethan. He hadn't smiled once at me.
"He uses his import company to move cash," I said, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be. "If we look at the shipping invoices, the numbers don't match. I'm telling you, it's there."
"Ava." My father finally looked at me. Not as his daughter, as an intern who was wasting his time. "I need evidence, not theories you read on the internet. Go file these."
He slid a stack of closed cases toward me. Cold cases. Dead ends.
I picked up my memo. My hands were shaking.
Ethan knocked and came in without waiting. "Dad, the clerk from the southern district called about Vance. They want you on the call."
My father stood instantly. "Tell them I'm coming."
Ethan looked at me and gave me that pity smile. The one that said, try harder, little sister.
When they left, I sat in that big office alone. The office I used to draw in as a kid while my father worked. Now I wasn't even allowed to stay.
I left the DA’s building at 5:47 p.m. I didn’t go back to my dorm. I took the subway to campus because I couldn’t stand being alone in my apartment with my roommate gone. The sky over Manhattan was the color of bruises.
I didn't have anywhere to go.
That was the truth I didn't tell anyone. My roommate was gone for Thanksgiving. My mother was in Boston. I had no one to text. My entire life for the last three years had been: make Dad proud. Get into Columbia Law. Be better than Ethan. And in one afternoon, it felt like all of it had collapsed.
It started to rain while I was on the steps of the Library.
Not a light drizzle. A hard, angry New York rain that soaked through my blazer in seconds. Students ran past me, laughing, holding jackets over their heads, running in pairs. I just sat down.
I pulled my knees to my chest. My blazer was ruined. My memo was getting wet in my bag, the ink bleeding. I didn't care.
My phone buzzed. One percent battery. A text from Ethan: Dad said you left early. You good?
I didn't answer. I turned it off. It died anyway.
The rain was so loud I couldn't hear the campus anymore. My hair was stuck to my face. Mascara was running, I knew it. I was crying and the rain was hiding it, and that was the only kind thing about today.
That’s when I realized how lonely I was.
At 21, on the steps of one of the best law schools in the country, with a father who was the most respected DA in New York, I had no one to call to pick me up.
I put my head down on my knees and let myself cry. Not pretty crying. Ugly, shoulder-shaking crying that hurt my throat.
I don't know how long I sat like that.
Then the rain stopped.
Not really. I could still hear it hitting the concrete all around me. But it wasn't hitting me anymore.
I looked up.
A black umbrella was over my head.
It was large, expensive-looking, not the cheap drugstore kind that breaks in the wind. The water ran off it in perfect lines.
I followed the handle down to the hand holding it. Then up.
A guy. Maybe my age. Maybe a year older. White shirt, soaked at the shoulders because he was holding the umbrella over me, not himself. Dark hair, wet. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't looking at me like I was pitiful. He was just looking at me like... he saw me.
"You're going to get sick," he said.
His voice was low, calm. Like this was normal. Like girls crying on library steps in the rain was normal.
I wiped my face fast, embarrassed. "I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
He sat down next to me. On the wet step. Without even flinching. He moved the umbrella so it covered both of us. Our shoulders touched.
"I know you," I said, because I did. Business Administration student. Business Law, second row, he always sat there. He never spoke, but he always listened. Professor Grant was scared of him for some reason.
"I know," he said.
That threw me.
He looked out at the rain with me. He didn't ask why I was crying. He didn't give me advice. He just sat there. For the first time all day, someone wasn't telling me to do better.
"I'm Leo," he said after a minute.
"Ava," I whispered.
"I know," he said again. A small smile this time. "You argued for twenty minutes last week that intent matters more than the act. You were right."
I stared at him. No one had remembered what I said in class. My own father hadn't even read my memo.
The rain kept falling. Students kept running. But under that black umbrella, it was quiet.
"Do you want coffee?" he asked. "You look cold."
I should have said no. I should have gone home. My father would kill me if he knew I was sitting on wet steps with a guy. But I was so tired of being alone.
"Yes," I said.
He stood up and held his hand out. Not to be flirty. Just to help me up because the steps were slippery.
I took it. His hand was warm.
He didn't let go right away.
And as we walked down the steps, under one umbrella, with his scarf now around my neck because I was shivering, I thought maybe today wasn't completely ruined.
Behind us, my wet memo with the name LEONARDO VANCE written on top was still sitting on the step, bleeding ink into the rain.