ALL TWO HUNDRED people in courtroom 3B seemed to be talking at once. Yuki was texting her boss to tell him there’d been a mysterious delay when, at just after ten, the bailiff called out, “All rise for His Honor, Judge Byron LaVan,” and the judge entered the oak-paneled courtroom.

LaVan was fifty-two, a square-jawed man with wild dark hair and black-rimmed glasses. He was known to be a short-tempered judge with an impressive background in criminal law.

He took the bench, the seal of the state of California behind him, the American flag to his right, the state flag to his left. Laptop open in front of him, he was ready to start.

When the gallery was reseated, the judge brusquely apologized for his lateness, saying there had been a family emergency. Then he asked the bailiff to bring in the jury.

The twelve jurors and two alternates filed into the jury box, fumbled with their handbags and notebooks, and settled into their maroon swivel chairs. To Yuki’s right, Phil Hoffman whispered to his client, Dr. Candace Martin.

Sitting in the first row, directly behind Dr. Martin, were her two beautiful young children, Caitlin and Duncan, looking like angels. Angels who didn’t know what the hell was happening.

So, that was how Hoffman was going to play it, Yuki thought. He was going to go for sympathy from the jury.

Suddenly Yuki was struck with a sickening realization. Bringing the kids to court wasn’t just a bid for sympathy from the jury. Hoffman was forcing her to dial down her rhetoric so that she wouldn’t upset the kids.

Controlling son of a bitch.

She couldn’t let him get away with that.

Yuki listened to the judge instruct the jury, but a part of her mind was on her former, lucrative job in a big-deal law firm, which she’d quit so that she could do something meaningful — for herself and for the people of San Francisco.