Cross-examination

Zara Bennett has spent her entire adult life outrunning a surname that was once synonymous with disgrace. After her father's law firm collapsed in a corruption scandal that left their family in ruins, she clawed her way back to the top alone brilliant, disciplined, untouchable. At twenty-nine, she becomes the youngest woman appointed Queen's Counsel, feared in London's courts for her surgical precision and fearlessness before billionaires who think their money is a shield.

One of those billionaires is Damon Huxley, media king, tabloid emperor, and a man who has built an empire on influence, secrets, and charm sharp enough to cut bone. He's used to shaping narratives until Zara dismantles one of his. When she takes on a whistleblower's case and sues Huxley Media for defamation, she becomes the first person to publicly challenge him and win.

He retaliates the only way he knows how by leaking personal secrets about her client, pushing Zara into a fury unlike anything she's ever felt.
She corners him in a live TV debate, exposing his tactics before millions.
He watches her walk off that stage like a flame he suddenly can't control.

Forced together through a government mandated media inquiry, Zara and Damon engage in months of intellectual warfare, strategic seduction, and dangerous vulnerability. What begins as manipulation shifts into an affair that's equal parts toxic, tender, and terrifying. They meet in hotels under aliases. They send coded messages through news headlines. They argue until they kiss. They destroy each other's logic while protecting each other's hearts in the shadows.

Together, they must choose between reputation and love, between power and truth, between public ruin and private desire.
And the final verdict?
Only they can write it.