Liberty Ronson had not moved from the window since the last associate fled the conference room. Thirty-eight floors above Los Angeles, the city glittered like a spilled tray of diamonds, and she still tasted the girl’s words on the air: Objection, counselor—your stare is sustained.

Twenty-six years old. Twenty-six. And she had just eviscerated Liberty’s closing argument with a smile sharp enough to perform surgery. Liberty’s fingers tightened around the empty Baccarat tumbler; she hadn’t poured the whisky yet. She was waiting. For what, exactly, she refused to name.

The door opened without ceremony. Of course it did.

Liberty did not turn. “Close it. Lock it.”

The click obeyed her like everything else in this building eventually did.

She pivoted slowly, letting the younger woman take in the full effect: black suit cut like a blade, platinum hair twisted into a low knot that begged to be undone, eyes the colour of glacier melt. The intern (no, the prodigy) stood just inside the threshold, blazer gone, white silk clinging to every line Liberty had spent the last three hours pretending not to catalogue.

“You humiliated me today,” Liberty said, voice soft enough to cut throats. “In front of twenty associates and both name partners. Do you know what I do to people who humiliate me?”

She took one deliberate step forward. Then another. The heels made no sound on the marble.

“I ruin them,” she continued, almost conversational. “Slowly. Beautifully. Until they thank me for it.”

Another step. Close enough now to catch the scent of jasmine and reckless youth.

Liberty reached out, knuckles brushing the collar of that insolent silk blouse, lingering just beneath the frantic pulse she could feel leaping against her thumb. “Rule number one at this firm, darling,” she murmured, letting the endearment fall like a verdict. “Never touch the partners.”

Her hand slid to the door beside the girl’s head, forearm caging without contact, close enough that the heat of their bodies tangled in the narrow space.

“You just broke it,” Liberty whispered, lips grazing the shell of an ear she fully intended to own by sunrise. “And now I am going to break you in ways that will echo through every courtroom you ever enter.”

She let the silence stretch, let the promise settle like expensive perfume.

“Tomorrow, six a.m. My office. You will bring that brilliant brain and every ounce of defiance you possess.” Her voice dropped to smoke. “And when I’m finished rewriting your closing argument, I will rewrite every rule I ever thought I needed. Starting with the one that says I don’t take what I want.”

Liberty stepped back, smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her lapel, and opened the door with fingers that did not tremble. Not visibly.

“Welcome to Grant, Ronson & Greene,” she said to the empty hallway, tasting the girl’s surrender already. “Try to keep up.”