Prologue
THE PARALEGAL’S NOTEBOOK
A Novel
# Prologue
*HoldStillForMe*
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Marcus Chen closed his laptop at 6:47 PM, thirteen minutes before he was technically allowed to leave. No one noticed. No one ever noticed the junior paralegal in the corner office, the one with the window that looked out onto the parking garage, the one who spent his days buried in discovery documents and his nights buried in something else entirely.
He grabbed his messenger bag and walked past the row of associate offices, past the conference room where Sarah Mitchell was still hunched over depositions, her dark hair falling across her face, the top two buttons of her blouse undone in that way that happened at the end of long days when propriety gave way to exhaustion. She didn’t look up as he passed. She never did.
But Marcus looked. He always looked.
The elevator ride down was seventeen floors of accumulated tension, seventeen floors of replaying the way Jessica Thornton had leaned across his desk that morning to point at a clause in the Hendricks contract, her breasts straining against her silk camisole, close enough that he could smell her perfume, something expensive and warm that made him think of tangled sheets and Sunday mornings. She’d said something about indemnification provisions. He’d nodded and agreed with whatever she was saying while his cock stiffened against his thigh and his mind went somewhere else entirely.
The drive home took twenty-three minutes. He used the time to compose.
Not on paper. Not yet. But in his head, where the story was already taking shape, where Jessica Thornton wasn’t talking about indemnification but was instead perched on the edge of his desk with her skirt hiked up around her hips, her fingers wrapped around his tie, pulling him closer.
*I need you,* she would say in his version. *Right now. Don’t make me wait.*
Marcus pulled into his apartment complex at 7:14. He took the stairs two at a time, his keys already in his hand, his body already responding to what was coming. The ritual. The release. The only thing that made the days bearable.
His apartment was small and sparse. A couch. A desk. A bed that was really just a mattress on a platform frame. He didn’t need much. He spent most of his life inside his head anyway.
He dropped his bag by the door, kicked off his shoes, and went straight to the desk. The notebook was where he’d left it, leather-bound and soft from use, the pages filled with his cramped handwriting. He kept it analog on purpose. Digital files could be found, hacked, discovered. The notebook was his alone.
He flipped to a fresh page. Uncapped his pen. And began to write.
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