Objection Overruled: A Courtroom Romance

I've hated Daniel Park since law school.

That's not entirely accurate. I've competed with Daniel Park since law school. Same classes, same moot court, same clerkships. Always neck and neck, always pushing each other higher. He beat me for Law Review editor; I beat him for the Marshall Prize. He got hired by the DA's office six months before me; I made Senior Prosecutor a year before him.

We were rivals. We were supposed to be rivals. What I felt when I looked at him, the heat, the intensity, the way my blood ran faster, that was competition.

It definitely wasn't attraction. I told myself that for fifteen years.

My name is James Chen. I'm forty-one, I prosecute white-collar crime for the District Attorney's office, and I'm about to be forced to work directly with the one man I've spent my entire career trying to beat.

The case was enormous. A multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme that crossed state lines, involved a dozen shell companies, and implicated half the city's financial sector. Too big for any one prosecutor. The DA pulled both of us into her office and announced we'd be co-leading the prosecution.

"I need my two best people on this. You'll work together or you'll work somewhere else. Am I clear?"

We both said yes. Neither of us meant it.

The first weeks were brutal. We fought about strategy, about witnesses, about which evidence to lead with. Every meeting turned into a debate; every decision became a power struggle. The junior associates started taking bets on who would throw the first punch.

"Your approach to the forensic accounting is fundamentally flawed," Daniel said one night, late in the conference room, papers spread between us like a battlefield.

"My approach is based on fifteen years of experience."

"Your approach is based on ego. You're not seeing the money trail because you've already decided where it leads."

"And you're so certain you're right that you can't acknowledge any other possibility."

"Sound familiar?"

We glared at each other across the table. He was infuriating. Brilliant and infuriating, with those sharp eyes and sharper arguments, always finding the flaw in my reasoning before I could see it myself.

"Why do you hate me so much?"

The question slipped out before I could stop it. Daniel looked surprised.

"I don't hate you."