Chapter 2 The Test.

A buzz. Her phone lit up. An known number. It was her father.

Meet me at the courthouse. Now.

She didn't hesitate. She grabbed her jacket and left the wreckage behind-glass, milk, silence. Daphne had been deep in thought when the bowl of cereal fell from her hands. She didn't bother to clean it up . I mean, it was a perfect symbol of everything fractured between her and her father.

Daphne Baker knew the weight of legacies. She'd woken before dawn, as always-discipline wasn't something she'd learned, it was something she'd inherited. It surprised her when her father said she had to learn discipline. What was he on about? Her apartment was clean lines and cold beauty, much like the man who raised her. She made herself cereal every morning, a ritual she clung to because it was the only thing that still felt hers.

Daphne was a woman of power. Although it was slipping away now that she had left the Thompsons. She would do anything to get it back. Daphne could buy whatever she wanted, seduce whomever she liked, command the boardroom with her voice alone. But that morning, all she wanted was clarity. She wanted her father to tell her what she had to do to get her power back.

It had been eight months since she walked out of her marriage with Spencer Thompson. Some would say her walked out on her. All in all, she was out and she was glad! Since then she had been forced or rather pushed to where she was once again undermined, dismissed, treated as ornamental by the one man she needed to believe in her. Marvin Baker, her father. The founder of Belle and Baker. The man who built a well-to-do law empire from scratch and held every piece of it with a clenched fist.

When Daphne returned to her father's office, the silence felt colder than the winter outside.

Marvin Baker didn't look up when she entered. He sat behind his desk, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows and leather-bound volumes of law-books he'd read, memorized, and weaponized. His hand didn't stop moving as he signed a document with the same mechanical precision he used to dismantle adversaries in court.

She waited, standing tall in heels that clicked across the polished marble floor like a metronome of defiance.

Finally, he spoke.

"You want back in?" His voice was flat, carved from stone. "Then prove you're not just another heiress who can't take rejection."

No affection. No fatherly pride. Just a challenge.

She almost laughed. She wanted to scream. But instead, Daphne nodded once.

"I'm listening."

He didn't hand her a standard client file. There was no briefing folder, no neat list of deliverables. Instead, he slid a single envelope across the desk.

"Belle & Baker refused this case," he said. "Even your mother would've had the sense to walk away." That name-her mother-he said it rarely. It was always a knife when he did.

She opened the envelope. Her throat tightened.

The client was Vincent Wheels, a once-beloved international artiste before accusations of sexual assault, coercion, and corporate coverups shattered his record label and music career. . The media had crucified him. Social feeds turned his name into a trending curse word. Sponsors dropped. Investors fled.

"You want back in?" Marvin said again, his tone harder now. "Clean this up. Make it disappear. Convince the world he's not a monster."

It wasn't a legal challenge. It was a moral trap. And he knew it.

She could've said no. Should've said no. But she didn't.

"I'll take it," she said, pocketing the file.

She was desperate, but more than that, she was furious.

The case was a minefield-fifteen alleged victims, dozens of damning articles, and a social media storm that threatened to swallow anyone defending Vincent. Her peers warned her. Journalists circled her like vultures, whispering that she was selling her soul for daddy's attention.

Let them whisper. Even her sub conscious knew they were right.

Daphne didn't just fight the case-she killed it. She tracked down inconsistencies in timelines, exposed doctored screenshots and coordinated press leaks. He wasn't a monster after all. She pulled Vincent out of the fire-not clean, but alive. Her defense didn't claim innocence. It claimed refinement.

In the end, charges were dropped. Wheels settled quietly and vanished from public life. But Daphne Baker? She didn't vanish. She detonated.

Her name hit headlines: The Comeback Heiress, The Ice Queen of Law, The Baker Bloodline, Reborn. Everyone in the industry now knew what Marvin had tried to pretend wasn't true: Daphne was not just capable. She was great at what she does. Proficient. Excellent. Lethal.

But her father said nothing. Not a word.

So she left.

If Belle & Baker wouldn't make room for her, then she'd build her empire elsewhere. And she did-at Jess Ross, the very firm her father used to mock as "a tiny hive of desperate ladder-climbers in ill-fitting suits." They welcomed her with open arms, rolled out the red carpet, and handed her every controversial case they could find. They knew she was capable.

Jess Ross knew how to use a weapon when they saw one. And Daphne was their new nuclear option.

Within six months, she'd crushed Belle & Baker's reputation. Two of their oldest clients-one a pharmaceutical company, the other a multibillion-dollar entertainment firm -jumped ship to follow Daphne. She didn't beg for those wins. She earned them. The clients didn't care about bloodlines. They wanted results. And Daphne gave them exactly that.

Within nine months, her name was already being whispered in closed-door partner meetings. She was the rising star, the storm dressed in designer suits and blood-red lipstick.

The press painted her as a rebel with legacy in her DNA. A prodigal daughter turned corporate assassin.

And Marvin Baker? He watched every move she made. He didn't say it, but she knew.

She haunted him.

And then, one night, she got a call.

Just a number she hadn't seen in a year, blinking on her screen. She hesitated-then picked up.

His voice was low, quieter than she remembered.

A single line. Nothing more.

"Come home."

He didn't say he was sorry. He didn't need to. That wasn't Marvin's way.

But for Daphne, that call wasn't a surrender-it was a coronation. She didn't hesitate this time. She was no longer the desperate daughter begging for her place. She was the future.

Now, Daphne Baker walked the halls of Belle & Thompson with silent vengeance. Her office was larger. Her name was on the door. Her father's test had been brutal, his silence even more so-but she'd earned her place the hard way.

He didn't praise her. He didn't have to. He made her Managing Partner.That was his love language. That was affection.

And when they walked into meetings now, side by side, the partners looked at her differently. Not as the boss's daughter. But as something much more dangerous.

As the future.