“You wished to say something, Ms. Gunther-Perrin?” Rosenthal probably didn’t get into court once a year these days, but he knew how to size up a witness.

“I was just wondering” – Nicole chose her words with enormous care – “if you used anything besides the senior partners’ opinions to decide who would get the partnership.”

However careful she was, it wasn’t careful enough. Sheldon Rosenthal had been an attorney longer than she’d been alive. He knew what she was driving at. “Oh, yes,” he said blandly. “We studied performance assessments and annual evaluations most thoroughly, I assure you. The process is well documented.”

If you sue us, you’re toast, he meant.

Performance assessments written by men, Nicole thought. Annual evaluations written by men. She knew hers were good. She had no way of knowing what Gary’s said. If they were as good as hers… If they’re as good as mine, it’s because he’s got the old-boy network looking out for him. There’s no way he’s as good at this as I am.

But if Rosenthal said the process was well documented, you could take it to the bank. And you’d have to be crazy to take it to court.

“Is there anything else?” he asked. Smooth. Capable. Powerful.

“No.” Nicole had nothing else to say. She nodded to the man who’d ruined her life – the second man in the past couple of years who’d ruined her life – and left the office. Lucinda watched her go without the slightest show of sympathy. Woman she might be, and woman of color at that, but Lucinda had made her choice and sealed her bargain. She belonged to the system.

The stairway down to the sixth floor seemed to have twisted into an M.C. Escher travesty of itself. Going down felt like slogging uphill through thickening, choking air.

A couple of people she knew stood in the hallway, strategically positioned to congratulate her – news got around fast. But it was the wrong news. One look at her face must have told them the truth. They managed, rather suddenly, to find urgent business elsewhere.