‘You’re on, Miss Amorelli.’
‘I’m...on?’
‘Yeah.’ The challenge in his eyes is palpable. ‘Come back to my place and prosecute me. Let me see what you’ve got.’
My heart kerthunks. My stomach rolls. My blood boils. ‘You mean...to your place tonight?’
He nods slowly. ‘I mean right now.’
I’m on a precipice. It’s madness. Utter madness. Then again, we’ve already crossed that line. We’re in the danger zone. Are there shades of specificity within it? Are there degrees of risk? Or is it just a big, blaring Stop sign we should heed—but won’t?
I DON’T WANT to talk about the Donovan case. I don’t even want to think of it. I’m not grateful to it on any level.
Except one.
Olivia is here, in the living room of my London place, but she’s all business and I’m most definitely not. The city shimmers behind her, the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows of my Canary Wharf penthouse showcasing the modern heart of this ancient city. And Olivia framed by it is the cherry on top.
‘Did you know that she would have left for Australia two days later?’
She drags me back to earth. I nod stiffly.
Olivia’s expression is one of hollowed-out disbelief. ‘There is such evil in the world.’
We both know what she means. There is evil in the world and I enable it. I, and people like me. She’s not the first person to lay such an accusation at my feet, and I tell myself I’m no more bothered by her silent condemnation than usual.
‘What were you doing when you were that age?’ She lifts her enormous blue eyes to my face and I have the strangest sense that her reprobation is a physical force, a cold one. Defiance stirs inside me. Idealism is fine, but it doesn’t last very long in the real world. This, I know for a fact.
‘I was doing my Bachelor’s.’
Olivia’s searching eyes don’t leave my face. ‘She should have had the chance to live her life.’
‘Yes.’ I don’t argue that point—why the hell would I? ‘I had no ability to save her.’
‘But the next Samara Jones? The next woman Donovan does this to?’
Maybe this was a mistake. I used her interest in the case to get her back here but, fuck it, I don’t need to be cross-examined. ‘So you’d prefer to have a legal system relying solely on the work and accusations of the police?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘You think only the innocent deserve a fair defence?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes spark with mine and she lifts a hand to silence me. ‘Hear me out.’
Her determination throws me. I am her professional superior in every way, but she holds me utterly spellbound with that one simple gesture. I wait.
‘In an ideal world, I think only the innocent deserve a fair defence. Why defend someone who’s guilty? Why argue on their behalf?’ Her eyes narrow. ‘You use the law to their advantage. And you’re good at it. Really, really good.’
My lips curl—she’s so beautifully naïve. I was never like that. Losing your parents as I did gives you a different perspective on this world and the people within it, their capabilities, their demons—their all. Learning to forgive is not the same as being blind to a person’s faults. And humanity is inherently faulty, in my experience. ‘Our legal system is predicated on this. Everyone gets to plead their case.’
Her nostrils flare.
Now it’s my turn to silence her. I don’t lift a hand, but I continue speaking before she can interrupt. ‘How do we know if someone’s innocent or guilty? How can we decide? Are you okay with sending innocent people to prison? Just because they didn’t get an adequate defence?’
‘No. I said, In an ideal world.’
My smile is grim. ‘You’re a little old to believe in fairy tales, aren’t you?’
Her eyes hold mine and I feel a mutual sadness creep into the room. A wistfulness. This world isn’t what either of us would want it to be. It’s a fanciful thought—something I’m not prone to.
‘You can’t study law without respecting its mechanism.’
‘I do respect its mechanism.’ Her skin is goose bumped. Is she cold?
‘Yet you challenge its wisdom. You question the verdict.’
‘The whole country questions the verdict.’
‘That’s not how it works.’ My words are gruff. ‘The system decides who is innocent and guilty. Our job is to advocate for our clients and accept the ruling once all appeals are exhausted.’
‘Your clients are all guilty,’ she points out quickly.
‘The not guilty verdicts would seem to contradict that.’
‘That’s a load of crap,’ she says with a shake of her head, and I hear the passion in her voice and know that this is as deeply personal for her as it is for me.
‘One of the hallmarks of our legal system, one of the requirements that makes it unstintingly robust, is that anyone can have someone like me advocating for them.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ she says, shaking her head and tilting her face so that her profile is angled towards me. ‘Not everyone can afford the freedom you seem able to guarantee.’
More idealism. Of course.
‘There are hundreds—thousands—of men and women who were wrongly accused, who didn’t have the luxury of a Connor Hughes or Michael Brophy advocating on their behalf. Men and women who are rotting in prison because the system failed them.’
‘And you want to fix that, too,’ I surmise.
‘Yes.’
‘You want to form your own little Innocence Project?’ I am genuinely interested but the words come out as sneering and I’m too angry to take them back. Not angry with her. Angry with her arguments, which are predicated on lines of logic I instinctively seek to avoid.
‘Don’t mock my intentions!’ Her eyes spark like wildfire. I’m intrigued by the passion and outrage in their depths. Her anger matches my own.
‘I’m not.’ There is a gentle apology in the admission. ‘I’m interested in what your end-game is with law.’
She stares at me for a moment, and then nods crisply. ‘I want to put the Donovans of this world away. For good. I want to work for victims.’ Hearing his name on her lips makes me want to curl my hand into a fist and strike the wall. Heat flushes my face. The thought of Donovan ever knowing Olivia Amorelli disgusts me on a cellular level. My focus is lost; I home in on her statement, ignoring the visceral reaction I had to her use of my latest client’s name.
‘And the wrongly accused?’
‘They’re victims, too,’ she mutters.
‘Everyone suffers if the justice system breaks down. You talk about wanting to help the wrongly accused. How many more would be wrongly accused, lazily charged, if there were no accountability to police and investigators?’
‘I think most police officers are inherently good. That they want to see justice done. I trust them to see