We were having Sunday dinner at her apartment, just the two of us like we’d done hundreds of times. I’d told her everything after that day in his office—who Archer really was, what he’d done, how completely he’d destroyed me. She’d held me while I cried and hadn’t offered platitudes about forgiveness or moving on.
Now she set down her fork and looked at me carefully. “Have you heard from him?”
“No.” I pushed rice around my plate. “He stopped trying to contact me months ago.”
“And that’s what you want?”
“That’s what I said I wanted.” The distinction felt important. “I told him never to contact me again and he listened.”
“But?”
“There’s no but, Mamá.”
She gave me that look, the one that said she could see straight through me. “You still think about him.”
It wasn’t a question. I considered lying, decided against it. “Sometimes. Late at night when I can’t sleep. I wonder if he’s okay, if he thinks about me, if he regrets what he did or just regrets getting caught.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think it doesn’t matter.” I set down my fork. “What he did doesn’t get undone because he’s sorry. Dad’s still dead. You still spent years unable to leave the house. I still lost seven years. His regret doesn’t change any of that.”
“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t. But closure might help you heal.”
“I don’t need closure from him. I need to move on.”
She didn’t push, just squeezed my hand and changed the subject. But her question stayed with me for days afterward, echoing in the quiet moments when I couldn’t distract myself with work.
Three months after the bar exam, Sam and I were having dinner at our usual spot when he dropped the news casually over appetizers.
“Did you hear about Archer?”
I tensed immediately. We hadn’t talked about him in months, an unspoken agreement that the topic was off-limits unless I brought it up first.
“What about him?”
“Apparently he resigned from Devlin Holdings. Or got forced out, depending on which article you read.” Sam was looking at his menu, not at me, which meant this was deliberate. “It’s all over the business news.”
My stomach dropped. “What?”
“Here’s the interesting part.” He finally looked up. “People are saying he’s the one who leaked those internal documents—the ones from your case. He sabotaged his own company’s legal strategy, tanked their property values, destroyed everything from the inside.”
The room felt suddenly airless. “What?”
“Yeah. Some analysts think Devlin Holdings won’t survive the year. The board is scrambling, investors are fleeing. It’sa complete disaster.” Sam set down his menu. “Thought you should know.”
I stared at my water glass, my mind racing.
Archer had leaked the documents himself.
The evidence that had appeared so conveniently in our case file—he’d sent it. Deliberately. Had uploaded it knowing exactly what would happen when I found it.
“Gianna?” Sam’s voice pulled me back. “You okay?”
“He did it on purpose.” The words came out quietly. “He sent those documents knowing I’d discover who he was.”
“Looks like it.”
I tried to process that. Tried to tell myself it didn’t mean anything—that he’d probably just been covering himself legally or trying to get ahead of some investigation. That it was strategic, not personal.
