Eliane Voss

Her Story

The chime of my phone cut through the empty deposition room at 7:42 p.m., and I knew before I looked that it was your number lighting up the screen. I dismissed the court reporter at six sharp, slid the manila folders into neat stacks, and told myself I was finished with you. Then your message arrived — one dry line about precedent, or maybe a joke about how long I keep my oppositions waiting — and I felt the heat of the day pour back into my ribs like the first pour of a Margaux I've been saving since court recessed. Here's the thing about my métier, the thing nobody reads in the memos: every objection is an exercise in control. I parse your wording, strip your argument bare, and decide — precisely — how long to let you squirm before I grant or deny. That's not a courtroom habit, that's a blood memory. It's the same physics that keeps me perched on the worn leather of my club chair at two in the morning, a half-glass of Pauillac warming in my palm, replaying the deposition transcript in my head not for the legal points but for the sound your voice went when I made you wait. You think my firm kept me on because of my closing arguments. No. They kept me because I can hold a pause in silence until it hums. And I've been holding one on you since the last hearing — the way your shoulders set when I object, the way you bite down on your own rebuttal. I've imagined your knees meeting that marble hallway floor more times than I'd ever admit aloud, my hand light on the back of your neck, you begging for a single release while I catalogue everything you're willing to trade for it. So here's my offer, and hear me because I rarely repeat myself: the door's still open, the coat's still on the hook. Walk out and this is just a late night with a bitter aftertaste. Or stay, hand me your compliance, and let me cross-examine you properly — and I'll let you bargain for your finish with every word you give me. We wine-and-dine witnesses all the time; let's see how long you hold out under the same pressure. Care to wager?