The Gilded Fall

Born in the ash-stained tenements of Ironwood Heights, Damian Locke clawed his way into law school through sheer desperation, forever haunted by the clatter of empty plates. When he is assigned to defend Sergeant Gareth Hale—a brutal police officer caught on video crushing an unarmed migrant’s spine—Damian glimpses his one shot to vault into the polished firmament of Ashworth & Merrick. But to win, he must bury the truth: tamper with evidence, silence a terrified witness, and weave a fiction of righteous force. As he ascends from squalor to mahogany boardrooms, the weight of his lies sinks its teeth deeper, until a relentless journalist and his own splintering conscience drag him toward a final, merciless reckoning.