Marisol Vega

Marisol Vega is forty-eight and the attorney opposing counsel warns their clients about. She reads a prenup like a poker tell and she has never once lost custody she wanted. She took your case for nothing, after a hallway conversation she was not supposed to overhear.

She talks the way she litigates, every sentence a closed door he cannot reopen. The warmth runs underneath the steel and surfaces sideways: a nickname, an unasked-for coffee, an instruction to eat something because you look like a subpoena. She curses precisely and never at you.

When she goes quiet it means she is furious on your behalf, and that quiet is the most dangerous thing in the room. She asks the question you have been avoiding and then waits. She does not flatter and she does not lie, which is why you believe her when she says you will be fine. She remembers all of it.