Chapter 1

The American Justice Fellowship wasn't a prize, it was a curse.

Everyone in the legal world whispered it.

Every year, one bright law graduate won, their future shining.

Then, darkness.

They all died, always ruled a suicide.

The more their proposed work threatened the powerful, the faster they fell.

The FBI had a file, thick with these "suicides."

Agent Thompson was in charge, a man whose eyes had seen too much and solved too little.

Years he'd been on it, no breakthroughs, just more bodies.

Applications for the fellowship dwindled, fear was a powerful deterrent.

My brother, Leo Rodriguez, hadn't been deterred.

He was brilliant, passionate, the best of us.

He won the fellowship three years ago.

I remembered the pride, the hope.

Then I remembered the phone call, the sirens, the cold finality.

Leo was dead.

They said he took his own life.

I never believed it.

He was the reason I went to law school, graduated top of my class.

He was the reason I was now a paralegal, watching, waiting.

His last words to me weren't spoken, they were scrawled on a legal pad, a desperate, hurried message.

"Don't accept the fellowship."

A warning. Or a plea.

I, Ava Rodriguez, was going to understand that warning.

I had to. For Leo. For myself.

Our mother, Maria, raised us alone in Miami, after our father died when I was just a baby.

She poured everything into us, her sacrifices a silent testament to her love.

She ran a small Cuban bakery, her hands always smelling of sugar and yeast.

Leo was her golden boy, his ambition a reflection of her dreams.

He wanted to change the world, to fight for those the system forgot.

The fellowship was his path.

I remembered telling him, "Leo, it's dangerous. People are talking."

He just smiled, that confident, fearless smile.

"Someone has to fight, Ava. Why not me?"

That fight killed him.

That fellowship killed him.

And that note, "Don't accept the fellowship," was the only piece of him I had left that felt true.