Page 117 of The Rules
Hestared at it from across his desk. The manila folder was innocuous. Plain. The kind that passed through his hands a hundred times a week. And yet, he hadn't been able to bring himself to open it.
"I trust your judgment,"she'd said.
He exhaled sharply through his nose. Ridiculous. She'd never trusted him. Not with her identity, not with the fucking truth.
With a single decisive movement, Ben reached for the folder and flipped it open.
The opening pages were cold, clinical: Legal documents. Facts without feeling. Niel Winters. Financial fraud. Conviction. Ben read with detached eyes, mind already halfway out the door. Another sob story. Another desperate attempt to manipulate him.
Until it wasn't.
His fingers stilled on the third page. The movement of his eyes slowed, then stopped completely.
"Samuel Crawford," Ben murmured, the name leaving a bitter taste on his tongue.
He knew Crawford. Everyone in the legal world did. The man was a legend—untouchable, with a spotless conviction record and a Harvard pedigree polished to perfection. He was also Ben's father’s oldest friend. And once, a long time ago, he'd been his mentor.
Back then, he had still believed in justice.
Ben interned under Crawford during his first case—young, eager, and painfully naive. And Crawford had gutted that naivety in a single line:“You’re a good lawyer, Ben. But you need to stop thinking like a hero. Heroes don’t win cases—men like me do.”
It wasn’t just a warning. It was the line that ended whatever trust Ben had left.
From that moment, he saw who Crawford truly was—how he twisted facts, silenced doubt, buried truth like it was strategy. And Ben had let it happen. Watched the verdict fall, sharp and final, and said nothing.
He hadn’t spoken to Crawford since. Not really.
Then he saw the date. Right at the start of everything.
His breath caught.
He turned the page—hands suddenly too slow, too deliberate—and there it was.
The case.
Not by name. Not on paper. But it belonged to him.
The one that had haunted him from the moment he realized the man they'd defended had been innocent. The first case he’d ever been near, the first time he’d sat in the corner of a dark conference room with a borrowed tie, thinking he was learning from the best. Thinking he was lucky to be there.
His name wasn't on the memo—he hadn't earned that yet.
But he remembered the language. The strategy. The cold, clinical tone.
And then: the internal correspondence.
Black and white. Stamped and time-coded. Between Crawford and the financial crimes unit. Dated three weeks before Niel Winters’ arrest.
The language was cautious. Carefully couched. But the message was unmistakable.
They’d picked the target before the investigation began.
Built the case backward. Fabricated the inevitability.
Ben’s blood ran cold.
This wasn’t just familiar. This was a mirror.
The same pattern. The same rot. The same quiet corruption that had taken his first client and torn the man’s life apart while Ben watched, too young and too naive to understand the game he was already inside of.
