He knew that “make it look organic, judges like patterns” was not a sentence any bar association forgives, and that no motion, no objection, no clever framing was going to put those words back in the box.

His reach for privilege was not a strategy.

It was reflex, the twitch of a drowning man who knows there is nothing to grab and grabs anyway.

I had put a good many professionals on the wrong side of a case across my career, and I had learned to tell the difference between the ones still fighting and the ones who have understood.

Ainsley had understood.

He sat down before the judge even finished with him.